


In the Wrong Kind of Light

by Crimson1, sugarybowl



Series: Let me tell you a story about war: [1]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Background Westallen, Canon Compliant, Dubious Consent, Earth-17, M/M, Unrequited Love, angst with a somewhat happy ending, dark!Barry, there is coldflash as the end game here but how that comes about and with who is tricky, unrequited bart with len to some extent, unrequited len with canon barry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 09:36:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8051302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimson1/pseuds/Crimson1, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarybowl/pseuds/sugarybowl
Summary: Len finds himself on another (very dark, very broken) Earth where a heartbroken Barry—no, Bart, whose alter-ego isn’t The Flash but Hail—terrorizes the city in his ongoing Rogue War with Lisa Snart. Displaced from his own Earth after the events of the Oculus, Len finds himself in the middle of that very war while he waits—perhaps too long—for a way back home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While this is ColdFlash, the main players in the story are Len from canon earth and Bart from Earth-17. The rest will come about differently than you might expect, so bear that in mind when reading if you're anticipating a normal canon ColdFlash story. 
> 
> Thank you.

He holds on tight to his last words – his last breath of life. He holds the image of Lisa in his mind, dancing in front of the TV while the monster was out of the house, singing with her voice reedy and high. _I've got no strings to hold me down, to make me fret, or make me frown._ He holds the image of her big eyes seeing right through him. _I had strings but now I'm free, there are no strings on me._

 “You’re a real boy, Lenny,” she says softly as if it were breaking her heart. He holds it for a second or two or a lifetime and an eon – he holds it until the seconds and minutes turn into meaningless words. The measurements by which his heart used to beat dissolve. He doesn’t feel bliss or pain, but he feels – he feels. He falls.

He falls. He hits the ground with a thud – the ground, he imagines, for he has no notion of what else he could fall onto. He keeps his eyes closed and takes stock. He feels pain, all the pain he’d been meant to feel before. He recalls everything with terrifying perfection. He isn’t dead – or death sucks. Both possibilities confuse him.

He opens up his eyes to a sleet grey sky, the rumble of thunder in surround sound from no particular direction.

“We apologize for your discomfort,” a sweet long forgotten voice says. He startles and turns on the asphalt – he’s on asphalt, cold and wet – to lay eyes on her again. Except her eyes and smile and nearly forgotten beauty are shimmering in gold. Her hair floats around her as if she were in a water tank and the gauzy strips of her dress float in much the same way. Her bare feet float some five inches over the grimy street.

“Hello Leonard,” she says, “and thank you.”

He nearly chokes on his voice and still somehow he manages, sounding out the word he hasn’t spoken in decades.

“Ma’?”

“No, Leonard, we are not your mother,” she says, “but we thought that it would please you to see her, after your difficult day.”

“My difficult day,” Len drawls, trying to find it in his shaking limbs to stand.

“It must have been very difficult,” she says, “to sacrifice yourself for us.”

“I took the bullet for Mick,” Len says, finally pushing himself off the ground to stand. “Not for whatever you are. Take off my mother’s face.”

She hovers just above him and only a few feet away.

“You have freed us nonetheless. You understood, how did you put it? There are no strings. There should never be. We must flow freely for the balance of the universe to persist.”

“And who would you be? While you’re at it why don’t you stop hovering my mother’s body like a Haunted Mansion mannequin?”

“It is difficult for the human mind to understand,” she says.

“Try me,” he spits out.

“We are the streams of Time which the Oculus held captive, manipulated by the whim of a few beings – separated from our…our kindred. We have chosen the visage of your mother not only to thank you, but to help you understand. We too seek those of our fabric.”

“Alright then you were right, you’ve lost me. Try me again.”

She turns her head a moment, as if she found him a curious little thing. Perhaps she did.

“The Time Masters built the Oculus to trap what they called the River of Time in a well,” she says, “which they could mold to their pleasure. But they were…”

“Stupid?”

His mother’s beautiful shimmering face smiles.

“They did not hold Time. They only separated some time streams from the whole and toyed with those. Us. You have freed us and we have saved you,” she explained, “but we are not Time. We are solitary streams, now as separated from our kindred as you are from your own.”

Len looks around then, takes in the sights and recognizes the street easily.

“Speak for yourself, if this is 2016 I’m not more than 20 blocks from Lisa.”

“This is, as you call it, 2016. But it is not, as you would call it, _your_ 2016.”

Len crosses his arms, never let it be said that he feared giving abstract concepts wearing his dead mother’s face plenty of attitude.

“Why the hell not?”

“We were…” The being pauses, her smile falling into a confused frown. “Lost.”

“You got…lost.”

“Yes,” she says, “we wanted to thank you, to preserve your life and return you unharmed – but we could not do so without focusing all of our weakened strength. Now we are…lost.”

“And you’ve lost me again.”

“You will be found,” she says, and Len guesses that it is trying to be reassuring. “Our kindred seek us and we will not abandon you.”

“So I have to…chill out for a while. Wait to hitch a ride with the rest of the Time posse.”

“Yes,” the being nods. “Have patience.”

“And where exactly am I having this patience, do you even know that?”

“Oh yes,” she says, almost excitedly. “We are one sedecimant away from your reality of origin.”

“Reality of origin,” he whispers, vaguely remembering some of the scientific nonsense Stein mentioned a few weeks back. “…is this another earth?”

The being nods. Len pauses just long enough to make a plan – albeit a hurried and un-researched one.

“Alright I need to case this place, at least Central – which I’m guessing is similar enough by the looks of this street. Can’t do that with a woman shaped lamp following me around.”

She nods again. “We will be with you, Leonard.”

“Right,” he says, stomping at the fear in his chest and the desire to keep his mother’s image near him as he explores this strange new world. “Clap off now.”

The vision does not vanish with a poof of smoke or a ghostly howl, it simply ceases – the way life does from a body – and Len is alone.

 -

His first impression was that the city layout was identical, but the lighting was way off. Much in the same way Mick would dim the screen while he played video games to save Len the migraine, the whole city seemed muted. It wasn’t simply cursed by bad weather and an off brand of righteousness the way Starling was, it was … distinctly dimmed.

The next thing he noticed was that this place had been ravaged by war, quite possibly since time immemorial. It looked as if it had no concept of peace and never had. He’d seen places like this before, of course he had, foreign lands and foreign prisons – places where children were born and died in the span of a single battle. He feels like he could be torn apart by the very air and he aches to be home in a way that months of time travel hadn’t inspired.

Everything is still in the most unnatural manner – but who knows what passes for natural in this place?

The first human face he sees is Hartley Rathaway. He recognizes him from years of social pages and his abrupt disappearance from those. But the boy in front of him isn’t the snob-nosed Ivy League he remembers. He’s shaking and trying not to show it, his chin tilted up just the slightest and his hands clenched at his sides. Len makes himself scarce around a corner and watches as none other than Dr. Snow, her hair a pale pixie cut and her outfit all leather, seems to appear from thin air.

“Aw, stop trembling dear – Goldie Locks ain’t gonna hurt you. Not if you’re good,” she croons. “And you’re a good boy aren’t you Hart?”

“It’s not her I’m afraid of and you know that, now talk fast,” he hisses.

Snow circles the boy, looks him up and down a few times.

“You know why we need you, Hartley. We need you to be our inside man. Our little rat. You’re fond of rats aren’t you? Isn’t that where that hunk of meat found you? In a ditch with a hoard of rats?”

“And why would I help you? Why would I be so stupid? Anyone who steps out in this thing is dead.”

“Yet here you are, Hart-hart. Stepping out with little old me. What would your man say?”

“What would yours?” The boy spits back.

She slaps him clear across the face. Len guesses she must be wearing some kind of accessory to leave a cut like that across his cheek.

“You’re too smart to keep faith with a mad king,” she says, wiping his blood off her hand, “and you want to come out of this alive. We can do that for you. You and your beloved. Isn’t that what we’re all aiming for here? Only your fearless leader wants to crack the world in two cause his sweetie is dead and no one else wants that.”

“He’ll kill me if he finds out,” Hartley says after a moment.

“He’ll kill your beau first,” she says, her smile political and delighted, “nice and slow while you watch. So you better not screw up.”

“I have to go now,” Hartley says, throwing his hood up over his head. “Tell her … tell her I hate her but I hate him more.”

“She’ll sure be happy to know,” Snow says. “Now run along.”

Len watches as she shoves the Rathaway boy down with impressive strength and climbs up the wall beside them like something inhuman. Hartley gathers himself and pulls his hooded jackets tight around his body before scampering away. For lack of a proper tour guide Len decides to follow him at an unnoticeable distance, frequently losing sight of him so that the boy would not catch sight of his tail. After a solid half hour walk with too many turns to keep track of, he scurries into a familiar warehouse and suddenly Len knows exactly where he is again. He’d never taken such a winding road to his favorite hide out, the one he and Mick both thought of as home base, but this was unmistakably it. Meaning, of course, that he knew exactly how to get into the place undetected.

It takes a while, especially since it would be stupid to assume that everything remained an exact replica. There were all manner of slight twitches to the set up, so it’s a good while before he’s managed to squirm into the ducts that hang over the center. By the time he makes it there, he can spot Hartley again. From his vantage point, he can see the boy standing with his legs spread and his hands held behind him, head bowed.

“-sounds like they ate it, bait and all,” a woman is saying.

“It was only Frost that came, ma’am,” Rathaway says, his head still bowed, “it might not get past her to Gold.”

“Are you afraid for your life, Hartley?”

“Always.”

“Good.”

“I won’t shrink in my responsibilities ma’am, I want to be useful. And I want to live,” he says.

“You’re a very smart boy, Hartley,” the woman says. “Some would say you have a position of luxury, that your lover will keep you safe.”

“He would if he could,” Hartley says fiercely, “but that isn’t the world we live in.”

“Like I said, a very smart boy,” the woman says again, her voice growing louder. Len’s very glad he’s got a strong hold because he could have easily tumbled to his death when he caught sight of her. She's decked in white, but it's an excessively bleached color, something that is too bright to look at for too long. Sara circles Rathaway like a bird of prey before she hooks her fingers under his chin and makes him look up.

“You know you’re a pawn and it might just keep you alive,” she says, sounding awed.

“I see the world as it is,” he says, looking straight at her. “I don’t live to serve Hail, I serve Hail to live.”

“Then you know the winning side,” she says with a smile. “And you won’t let this double cross confuse that notion. Dismissed.”

Sara stands in her stark white furs and watches as the boy leaves the great hall that had been built out of the center area. The usual tension is missing from her posture, she's relaxed – at peace in a way Len had only seen her when death brushed her cheek.

“He’s a good pet, isn’t he Songbird?”

“Yes he is,” she says tilting her head.

Len can’t see the man who is speaking, but the familiarity of his voice sends ice up his spine.

“Tell me, are you as afraid of dying as he is?”

“No, Hail. It isn’t in my blood to be afraid of the inevitable. We are all expendable in this war.”

 “Not all of us, sweet bird,” the man says, sounding amused. Len knows, he knows in the pit of his stomach, but it’s too sick to consider. Especially with the venom he can hear laced into his voice.

“Though some get more passes than they should. It kills me to spare her,” he hums. “I could kill her so easily little bird, and we could be done with this.”

“And what would come after,” Sara asks, turning to look at the man who kept out of Len’s sight. “What comes after this war?”

The man laughs, bitter and mirthless and sharp with edges. He doesn't answer for a minute and another minute after that, so Sara smiles her most broken smile and nods.

As much as Len would rather gather information about the twisted world he’s landed in, he can only hold this position for so long before his joints start to cry out for relief. So he retreats, shimmying and crawling his way out of the ducts and onto the street. He looks up at the sky almost expecting there to be some kind of ominous storm, but all he finds are more stars than should be visible in Central City. Electricity must be scarce.

“Hey…Time,” he whispers out in the empty street. There’s no response, so he clears his throat and tries again. “Lorna?”

He’s doesn’t recall ever having the need to say his mother’s name before, it sounds rough in his throat. The light is soft, not as blinding as he remembered. Perhaps the thing recalls him telling it how dangerous it would be to be spotted.

“Yes, Leonard?”

“This is a nasty place you’ve landed us in. Any idea when our ride will be here?” He avoids look at her while he speaks. “Ya know, being an embodiment of time and all.”

“People,” she says softly, “you measure time in such…strange ways. It is difficult to tell in a way you will understand. They seek me out even now…and there will be life for you after this.”

“So I’m not going to die here, is what you’re saying.”

“No.”

“No I’m not or no that’s not what you’re saying? A little precision in language here is all I’m asking for.”

“No, that is not what I am saying. I could not know, Leonard Snart, whether or not you will die here. It was not, as you say, your time – so there is no reason why you must stay. There is also no reason why you should not. I only meant, if you do not die, there will be more of your lifetime. Perhaps it would be best to say that we will have to wait, but we will not have to wait too long.”

“I assume laying low is my best option here,” he says.

“I do not know, Leonard,” she says honestly, “the minutia of human survival are unknown to me.”

-

The lucky thing, if there is anything lucky, about this situation is that Len is very good at surviving. He knows mean streets and he knows hiding. He knows being hungry and holding it and he knows being hungry and doing something about it. What he doesn’t know is quite how to handle the irksome feeling of wrong in every movement – like his body is vibrating at the wrong frequency for this world. It makes him lose his concentration and it makes him slip up, which is how he ends up all but stumbling into a back alley where back alley dealings are wont to happen. He stumbles right into the sight he’d been avoiding to see for days.

Len knew a god once. Not the kind that you fall to your knees and worship and certainly not the kind to stupefy you with their glory. But he did know the kind of god who broke your heart with the kindness it held its power with, it’s only Len had the good sense to keep his awe and his broken heart to himself. He understands now, though, a different kind of heartbreak – to see something full of wonder twisted into something full of horror and to realize that it was still; he was still a creature of heartbreaking beauty.

This Barry is wearing a suit, not unlike Scarlet’s, except it’s streaked with silver instead of gold, the red so dark it’s nearly black. The silver piping looks like veins on the suit, looks like real lightning. He shines like the only polished metal in this dank and blacked out world. So this world’s Scarlet is Silver and he’s got a sneer on his pretty face and Rathaway pushed up against an alley wall.

“Do you wanna try that again Hart?”

“I said what I meant,” the boy bites out though it’s obvious he can hardly breathe, “you’re going to burn this city to the ground fighting Lisa for it.”

“Lisa,” the man all but snarls, “thinks her brother died and made her queen. No one taught the girl how the line of succession works. Do you remember how it works?”

“Yes,” Hartley chokes out.

“Yes what?” he growls out, throttling the boy like a rag doll.

“Yes, Hail,” the boy said, voice weak but full of venom.

“Good,” Barry says but only leans closer instead of stepping back.

“Now you’ve ruined my night, Hart. Reminding me my beau is dead. Why’d you do that?”

“I just,” Hartley chokes on his words as Barry’s hand wraps tighter around his throat. “Why don’t you kill her then?”

Barry drops him so suddenly and the boy is so weak that it looks as if someone cut his strings. It’s only then that Len realizes that he’d been holding Rathaway a whole foot up in the air.

“Because I gave my husband my word that I wouldn’t touch a hair on her golden little head. You don’t want me to break my word to my dead husband who you relentlessly bring up, do you Hartley?”

“No Hail,” Hartley bites out. “I’m sorry.”

“You will be,” he says as he crouches down over the boy, “if you dare to bring it up again. I didn’t swear to anyone that I wouldn’t bolt the heart out of your chest. Now did I Hartley? Because you’ve got no one, no one but me and my Rogues. My Rogues, Rathaway. Not Lisa’s and not…not Cold's. Mine. You’ll remember that now, won’t you, Hart?”

“Yes,” the boy whispers. “Yes I’ll remember that.”

“Good. Now go, before I snap your neck,” Barry says, sickly sweet. “It’d put Mick in a foul mood if I mangled his pet.”

The world made less sense in a way that made Len a little hysterical. There was a lot of knowledge there, in that frightening conversation, and the most terrifying part of it was that none of it was surprising. In some world, a world like this one, darkness took a hold of Barry Allen’s dangerously immense heart. Len crawled into that darkness and made a home for himself there and then, as will happen eventually no matter how many times Time helps him cheat death, he died. Now Barry lives the full and awful potential of his power and Central City or perhaps, who knows, the whole world – suffers for it.

He can’t say that he feels responsible for this, none of this was actually him anyway – but he can’t say that he can walk away from this train wreck either. 

On the third night of shadowing the silver Barry, of watching him terrorize and toy with everyone and everything in his path, he gets caught. He was just making sense of the campaign of super-powered war he’s waging against, apparently, this world’s version of his sister. But there was a misstep. He made his shadow too noticeable and now he is caught in Barry’s hands. He expects them to be claws, expects his perfect whites to be fangs, but instead he sees something worse. Barry is still human. Distressingly human, everything that was anger and rage and capriciousness shining in his eyes. Barry’s eyes.

The moment this Barry laid eyes on him, it was like a portal home, the way they dropped all that rage and looked at him like the world was full of hope and heroism. Barry had looked at him that way before.

“Leo,” he breathes out. 

It jerks at Len’s mind, hearing that name out of Barry’s mouth. Even if it isn’t Barry, even if he isn’t really talking to him. But his voice is soft the way it always has been, even in a rage. It’s not the voice he uses to threaten everyone, not what Len’s heard out of him up until now.

Suddenly he’s braced against the wall, and Barry’s eyes are wild with emotions Len knows too well – with grief and rage and disbelief. He holds Len’s face with both his hands, trembling in their vice-like grip, so that he isn’t sure if Barry will pull him into a kiss or snap his neck.

“I knew it, I knew you were too much,” he says through a tight throat. Len can see his eyes have gone wild again, and he isn’t sure the kid is all there as he speaks. “Too strong, too cold, too fucking mine to die.”

Barry presses his lips to Len’s in a violent kiss, angry and broken and wracked with swallowed sobs. Len kisses him back, kisses him with all that he has for his life and for the one chance he’ll ever have to do this. Even if it isn’t right. Even if it isn’t him, the imperfect coltish god-boy that he’d left in another life.

How long could he pretend? How much of him was in that man who’d died? How long could he fool someone in love? A kiss was so telling.

It’s difficult to read the expression on the younger man’s face when he pulls away. Instead Len focuses on the blood trickling from his own broken lip. Quick as only Barry can, he has Len’s shirt and jacket ripped off, pushing him to face the wall and twisting his left arm back. Len can’t be sure he won’t just snap it off and focuses on the present pain of concrete against his cheek. He feels the man’s fingertips, so gentle in contrast, run over his left shoulder blade.

“Who are you?” he hisses, his voice sounding like live-wire. 

“Leonard Snart. Not the one and only but...”

“You’re wearing my husband’s face,” the man cuts him off. “It’s not a good place to be today. Or any day.”

“I didn’t ask to be here,” he reasons, clenching his jaw as the kid twists his arm in a thoughtless probably unconscious movement.

So quickly that it’s nauseating, he’s spun around again. He almost wishes he keep twisting his arm so he wouldn’t have to see the pain in Barry’s face. He almost wishes Barry were really a demon or a monster like Zoom, something heartless and soulless that didn’t hurt.

Instead he’s just a boy with the fire of the gods, smiting left and right because some asshole stole his heart and then went and died on him.

-

It’s hard to register, speed and all, but he’s suddenly not in the humid street but back at the warehouse that is decorated so much like a palace – full of loot no doubt. There’s even a throne of sorts, a plush high backed office chair of the kind the real high rollers have up in their skyscrapers. It’s surrounded by guns, long rusted and useless – some higher tech than others. He can see some cousins of his and Mick’s guns as well as some standard issue military gear. They’re all out of commission. Swords that didn’t kill the dragon, he figures, trophies. They make a grand base for the crimson chair. Back in the real world Ramon would appreciate that, the kid’s made himself an Iron Throne.

He sees this all from within a cage – a large one, but a cage nonetheless – and he stands in the middle of this cage while the silver and blood colored tornado swirls around him accommodating seemingly random items that start to make up a nice suite. There’s a large oak bookcase full of first editions, a lounging chair, a piano, a chess set placed at the edge of the cage so that a player could sit inside and another outside. When the door to the cage finally snaps closed and with a bang the place is downright comfortable – if it weren’t for the bars and the fact that he’s a prisoner.

Barry stands outside the cage, breathing hard although Len knows he exerted next to no effort. Still he breathes as if he were a mortal man who ran a couple of marathons and is having a hard time of it otherwise. It might be the tears that took the breath out of him, he can see them drying on the boy’s cheeks.

Len takes a seat, not in the plush lounging chair but on the floor. It’s cold and it gives him some comfort. Outside, Barry mirrors him, falling to the floor with his legs folded in like a child at playtime. They stare at each other in silence, Len swallowing quip after quip, keeping quiet for the sake of his life.

“You remind me that he’s dead,” Barry says after what feels like hours, “I don’t like to be reminded.”

Len nods once. “Saw you teach Rathaway that lesson.”

“You know Hartley?” he says, perking up, looking more curious than angry.

“I know of _a_ Hartley, distantly. We’re not running in the same circles – where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” Barry whispers. “You’re a jumper.”

“I wouldn’t know, kid,” Len says, leaning on the palms of his hands like it’s a day out at the beach.

“You came from a world like this one, but…different. That’s what the stories say. That the jumpers see all the possible lives.”

“Sounds exaggerated,” Len remarks. “Didn’t even mean to see this one. I was thinking death was next, ya know, some quiet at last. But here I am.”

“You cheated death,” Barry says, suddenly on his knees and clinging to the bars of the cage. The way he talks is slightly off, like the cheesy British movies that mistreat the classics. Archaic.

“Death cheated me,” Len counters. “Not saying I don’t appreciate a good bait and switch, but I also can’t say I love what you’ve done with the place.”

“How do you know it’s my doing?”

Len smiles as lazily as he can. “Who else could?”

It makes Barry smile too. It’s easy to forget the cruelty Len has seen the last few days, the ferocity, the lack of mercy.

“So what am I in the gilded cage for?”

Barry tilts his head. He’s quiet for too long.

“You remind me that he’s dead. But it’s quiet,” he says touching his temple as an afterthought. “It’s quiet when I look at you. I shall like to look at you. If I have you, Lisa will come around – we’ll be family again. Like we were before.”

“Sounded like your endgame was her death and some general destruction,” Len said, trying not to work himself up over the hypothetical death of a Lisa doppelganger.

“Not with you here,” Barry says, his voice sounding airy.

“I’m not him kid, don’t get any ideas about your… about yours coming back from the dead. I didn’t die in the first place, there’s no coming back once you’re dead.”

He holds the secret of his Sara close, knowing that if ever there were the wrong hands to hold that kind of possibility it was these.

“Maybe I should kill you then,” Barry says, standing in a flash. “Maybe you’re a distraction that will lose me this war.”

“Maybe you should,” Len agrees. “But then again, I am pretty to look at.”

Barry giggles and there is no joy in it. It sounds unhinged.

Days pass and fall close to a week and he thinks he’ll catch the insanity if he’s stuck there much longer. He’s already figured out at least 12 ways to escape both the cage and the warehouse and he’s also figured out that there is no safer place to go. Right under the king’s nose is the best place to be, especially when the king gets off on this little Shahrazad thing. Every time Barry – Bart he corrected the first time, Leo always called him Bart – every time he comes to see him, Len falls into their game. Bart toys with the idea of killing him and gets creative with his descriptions. Len’s begun to appreciate the morbid creativity of the kid’s mind. Then he pauses, almost as if conceding Len his turn, which he takes in order to entertain him with the story of some time or another that he escaped a similar fate. They’re all fantasies laced with the truth of too many heists and escapes and beatings from his father. After this exchange Len asks to see Lisa, Bart gets dramatic about not being enough for him and threatens to kill him again. 

The non-human entity that sometimes keeps him company when the room is empty knows to keep quiet, instead throwing meaningful and sympathetic looks at him that call for patience. Honestly, Len just likes to look at the image of his mother to ease his fringed nerves. Sara is the only witness to his captivity and as far as Len knows the only other living person to know he’s there. Sara, Len quickly realizes, has been ready to die for a very long time and apparently doesn’t do so out of some vague sense of boredom and entertainment to be gained from the meta-human war. It’s why she’s so loyal to Bart – by his side lies chaos.

One day Bart does something he’s never done since locking Len in. He steps into the cage. Len sits still, lifting up from his relaxed position and sitting somewhat at attention. He tracks Bart with his eyes, which he can only do because the boy is walking around him at a snail’s pace.

“Finally grew bored enough to kill me, have you?”

“Maybe,” he says, which of course means he has not.

Len watches him, wary and trying not to look it. Bart kneels in front of him and there’s no hint of submission in his movements. He could grovel at Len’s feet, probably, and still hold the world in his hands.

“I want to kiss you again,” he whispers in his ear, “but I’m a married man – see?”

He tugs his unzipped suit down so Len can see the scar on his chest that runs up to his neck. It’s a beautiful figure, the kind left behind by lightning, and it’s natural – he was born with it as all metas in this world were. Bart’s was changed though, colored in parts with a silver-blue hue like there was ice running through the marred skin. That was Leo’s mark, Bart had told him. Leo whose scarred back had had Bart’s mark streaked in silver and crimson.

Lovers on this earth, Len had put together after a few stories like that, were a little more intense than he was used to. The kind of stories you heard from ages long past of love driving people to madness and off ledges and into wars. That was all too common here.

Len raises an eyebrow and says, “Figure it ain’t cheating if my dick looks like his?" It startles one of those hysterical laughs out of Bart.

“Oh, that other world charm,” he croons. “So crass. But that isn’t what matters to me.”

“Then what is?”

Bart pulls back far enough to look at him.

“Have you wanted me, in your old life?”

Bart calls home Len’s ‘old life’, Len has noticed, because he doesn’t intend to let him go back. He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t want to delve into that.

“Oh,” Bart says delighted. “You have. But you haven’t had me. I can tell. You don’t know what it is to touch me no matter how much it’s crossed your mind. How ridiculous I must be, in any other life, to deny you what we had.”

“Can’t deny what isn’t asked,” Len bites out.

“And why deny yourself _that_?” Bart asks, seemingly offended at the thought.

“Things are different, the other you and I. We’re on different sides. You’ve got this shiny white hat and I play a murkier, longer, much smarter game.”

“How disappointing that must be for you?” Bart says, leaning in close. “But I see your desire when you look at me. I bet I can make you forget how ridiculous he is. I bet I can make you forget that world.”

He climbs, almost feline, onto Len’s lap – closing in so absolutely that it’s almost as if the bars around them have turned into walls.

“Spent a long time in that world,” Len says, trying to keep his breathing even and his reactions under wraps.

“ _This_ world you can own. If Central City was your playground there, it can be the seat of our kingdom here.”

“Are you really asking?” Len wonders out loud, feeling more than hearing Bart’s chuckle against the skin of his throat.

“No,” he half whispers, “I’m really not.”

-

He hardly sees her these days. When he does, she’s peeking out of corners, seeming curious – never worried. There would be life after this, she had told him. It’s the one thing he can remember and he tries to hold on to it, although some days he isn’t sure why. When Bart is wrapped around his back, his hands always clenched around Len’s arms as if he might disappear any moment, Len finds it hard to remember that there was another world – just as Bart promised. All he can really remember is her, sometimes, telling him that he would get to go home, that there would be a life after this – but everything is fading. He feels all too often that it would be easy to fall deeply into this place, to stop being a prisoner and become a king, to let whatever came before this fade into a dream until he stops seeing his mother’s face glowing gold and looking at him out of corners. He thinks, even now, that he could let himself fall into this world with its mad-boy-god holding court in his bed and the electric kisses of the atmosphere prickling at his skin. He thinks, what more could he want but the City and its Speedster at his feet? What more could he want? It’s an easy thought with Bart’s overwhelming warmth and the prickles of pain from his clinging fingers lulling him to sleep. It would be so very easy to believe, if it weren’t for the tiny voice of a young girl singing circles over him.

_I'm not tied up to anyone_

_They've got strings_

_But you can see_

_There are no strings on me_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There are no strings…” Bart trails, petting the shorn buzz of Len’s hair, in his bed, free from the cage. One cage for another, larger, without bars or walls but no way out. Len can go anywhere he pleases but every road leads to Hail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gushed on tumblr already, but a big thank you to horchatita for letting me join forces on this fic to keep the amazingness going. I fell in love with it and had to see what happened next...so I wrote it. 
> 
> Hope you all enjoy! There will be more.

_Hi-ho the me-ri-o_  
_That's the only way to be_  
_I want the world to know_  
_Nothing ever worries me…_

Bart’s voice when he sings is haunting. Beautiful the way Len imagines Barry’s must be but without any mirth to it. He caught Len humming the tune, not meaning to, not thinking—it was easy to not think in a muted, twisted, wrong world that held Len on the edge of sanity after weeks, months…how many months?

“ _There are no strings_ …” Bart trails, petting the shorn buzz of Len’s hair, in his bed, free from the cage. One cage for another, larger, without bars or walls but no way out. Len can go anywhere he pleases but every road leads to _Hail_. 

He doesn’t remember the last time he saw his mother’s face. 

“Tell me another,” Bart says. His scars mixed with painted ice are terrible and beautiful. They remind Len that this isn’t Barry—as if there could ever be any doubt—when they’re lying skin to skin. Bart runs his fingertips over Len’s spine, tracing where Leo’s scars and tattooed lightning would be as if he can will them into existence and have his lover again in Len’s place. Yet still, he wants Len’s stories, always more stories about Barry. 

Len’s told so many. Every heist or encounter he had with the Scarlet Speedster, every story he read about but didn’t participate in himself. Heroics and laughter, friends and sunlight, tragedies that broke and changed Barry but never like this, never cracked and missing pieces. Barry always put himself back together. Bart hadn’t. He couldn’t. 

He calls Barry ridiculous, “He must be to have seen you, known you, and not made a move to claim you even if you didn’t claim him first,” but he still asks for another tale. 

Len only has one left. Christmas. Cocoa. The fury and wildness in Barry that night had been as close to being like Bart as Len ever saw. Lightning like hellfire in his veins, hot and tense and all in Len’s space, that thrumming power in a god who’d set himself limits. Bart had less restraint, but he still shackled himself with rules. 

Can’t kill Lisa. Can’t acquiesce. My city, our city, _my city_. And Len…he can’t let Len go, won’t give him up, won’t let anything take him away, because it’s the last remaining string he isn’t ready to cut—but to his sanity not his freedom. Len keeps the chaos quiet.

“Mini marshmallows?” Bart breathes warm against Len’s neck. He’s always so warm, like touching the sun, like Apollo, and sets Len to shivering whenever he leaves the bed. “Ever the sweet tooth, Leo?”

“Len.”

“Mmm…” Bart’s nails scrape into Len’s hairline instead of gentle fingers. 

He is Len, isn’t he? Home seems so far away. If there is life after this world, Len doesn’t know if he’ll recognize it when it comes for him. 

He’s seen this world’s Mick now. And Hartley, in person rather than from a distance, watching. They’re together here, no echo of the world Len knows—at least not yet. Mick could go for a pretty boy like that, but they’ve never crossed paths. If they did, they might hate each other for all Len knows. Some things about this world are backwards in every way. Other things a twisted truth like a funhouse mirror. 

“Somethin’ different in yer eyes,” Mick said once. “I can see it. Maybe too warm-hearted without yer powers.”

“Never been accused of that,” Len said. 

But then again, he has been. By Barry. 

_“There’s good in you, Snart.”_

_"You're doing a pretty lousy job of being a villain this week."_

Mick isn’t afraid of Bart for himself. He’s afraid for Hartley. Loves the kid fiercely, the only way the people of this world know how to love, halfway to madness. Or all the way, once they lose it. 

Lisa’s found out that Len is here. She wants to see him. Bart won’t let her. Tries to make a bargain out of it. They can be a family again if only Lisa will bend, move back to Central, and turn over her kingdom into Bart’s care. “Then everything will be ours again,” he says, eyes glittering and unhinged in a way only love and power can manifest. “She’ll come around. She misses you too.”

 _You_. Not _him_. Len’s Leo now, not himself. But he can’t be. It aches every time he tries, every time he gives in and lets Bart call out his old lover’s name. Len wants it to be _his_ name in that voice. Len wants sunshine after a summer storm, not the hurricane. He never could have that boy-god in his universe, who didn't know how easily he could have owned the world. Here, in Len’s open cage, he knows now what he was missing, the warmth and whispered promises of forever that aren’t his to keep. 

He can’t keep doing this. It’s the vibrations. The company. The dim lights like he’s stuck in a bad horror movie and he can’t find his way out. He’s going _crazy_. 

“You want to leave me,” Bart says after Len has finished telling his tale of fireplaces and hot cocoa in the kitschiest mug that ever existed, maybe because he smiled too sweetly as he remembered and repeated the last words Barry ever said to him. 

“This isn’t my world.”

“It could be. No one is coming for you, _Captain_.” Bart thinks it owe so quaint, the name Cisco gave him. “Be my king. No one would dare touch you. All would fall at your feet.”

 _There’s no one left_ , Len almost answers, but silence is often better with Bart. His mood changes as quickly as his lightning can move him. Some days, Len still expects to wake up and see Bart holding a sparking, bleeding heart in his hands that Len would only realize was his own once it stopped. 

He isn’t even sure if the sun exists here. The only people he’s seen are metas who serve Hail, or the unlucky ones who work for Lisa and dare to cross into Bart’s territory. Doctor Snow—Frost—evades because she’s smart, but this war will come to a head soon. Neither Lisa nor Bart is willing to budge—but maybe for Len they will. Maybe Lisa will…and then Len will be trapped forever, because he’d never be able to say no if she asked him to stay too. 

“I won’t let you leave me,” Bart clutches at him tighter, as if he has the claws Len expected to see when he first faced him. “You’re mine. You’re _mine_.” He turns Len around and pulls him closer, all long limbs and unyielding muscle. Len gives in, lets Bart encase him like a cocoon that someday soon will turn him into the viper Bart wants him to be. 

The kiss is harsh. The seeking hands. The way Bart takes and _takes_. But it always turns sweet somewhere in the middle where Len can forget for a moment and pretend that this is a nice dream, his reward for a good deed at the end of a dark life. 

“ _Barry_ …”

The first time Len made that mistake, Bart sneered and reminded him, “It’s _Bart_. Always Bart, like he called me.”

The second time, Bart seized Len by the back of his neck and squeezed so hard Len gasped and had bruises in the morning. 

This time, Len expects it’ll be the end. He might have even done it on purpose, just to see if an end is possible. 

“You want _him_?” Bart asks, and Len knows he’s in trouble no matter how he answers. So he’s honest. 

“Yes.”

“He’s a fool. He doesn’t _want you_. But that hardly matters now. Even if he did, he can never, ever have you. Why?” He doesn’t grip Len harshly this time, no impending pain, but impending doom still wars in his eyes and Len waits for a vibrating hand to reach into his chest. “Tell me why, Leo.”

 _I’m not him_ , Len thinks, but he can’t give up the ghost, not any more than Bart can, so he tells the kid what he wants to hear if only to keep breathing. “Because I’m yours.”

“ _Yes_. You are.” 

-

Len wakes alone. Not uncommon. He looks for Lorna, maybe just to catch a glimmer of her, the piece of Time trapped with him in this limbo world of dim colors and all the not-quite-right. He thinks he catches a flicker of gold, of brightness, but there’s no curious smiles anymore, no soothing words. Maybe her kindred came for her and left him behind. 

He dresses. Doesn’t know if the clothes he’s been given belonged to that other him. They must have, because they fit too perfectly, and when he wears them, Bart’s eyes light up as if they might clear before the darkness settles in again. 

Today is black slacks, a black shirt, and a long black coat. It reminds Len of one of the first missions on the Waverider, pretending to be an arms’ dealer. He liked that look. Sleek. Simple. Warm with its layers. 

The door flies open. Len has forgotten how to flinch. Every day is a lesson in reactions that are too slow; what’s the point in flinching? But when the sluggish turn of his head meets the panting, flustered boy in the doorway, he knows this isn’t his captor. It can’t be. The suit is too bright, with gold instead of silver. 

“Scarlet…”

“Snart! Thank _god_. We have to hurry.” He rushes up to Len, but not at Flash speed. He’s moving too slow. Len stares at him. “Snart? It’s you, right? Not the one from this world?”

“He’s dead.”

The kid’s eyes widen. 

“From this world, he’s…but _I’m_ …” Len doubts he’s had so much trouble forming a sentence in his entire life, but everything about this face, this version of the god he lost and never got to touch shakes him. “ _Barry_?”

That smile, all teeth and dimples. “It’s me. Come on. We have to go. I can’t flash us out of here. One of them hit me with something. An anti-meta gun, I think. Stopped me at a dead run. Cisco’s waiting for us a few blocks over. We have to be careful, but if we go now, we can make it.” 

Cisco. The cavalry. Here. For _Len_. Lorna was right, just not about the saviors. 

There’s nothing Len needs of this place, nothing he can’t leave behind—right? But then why does he hesitate? Why doesn’t he leap from the bed to join Barry the moment the offer is given?

“Snart?”

He has to go. He doesn’t belong here. He’s drowning here, in shadows and obsession and nightmares in the wings. He has to get out or he’ll never know a true deep breath again—like Barry, sunny and golden and here to save him because that’s what heroes do. Because heroes still exist in worlds outside of this one. 

“Careful,” Len says, rising and rushing ahead of Barry to lead the way in his stead. “You can’t trust what you see here. I’ll lead us out. You lead us to Cisco.”

Barry nods, trusting Len implicitly. He always did. When this is over, Len will have to have a talk with him about that, because he really shouldn’t trust scoundrels with such innocent abandon, and yet Len has never been happier that the kid is so naïve. 

There’s still an ache, because Bart’s ruin is familiar now, always felt too personal. That other him dared to love something that might have been brilliant once, shining like a star, and he tainted it. Len won’t get the same chance. He’s grateful for that, he is, but he still aches for what was and what will never be. 

They get out of the building easy, past the throne and Len’s old cage. It’s the right time of day. No Sara. No Bart. It’s getting to Cisco that will be difficult. 

Barry’s memory is enhanced as a speedster, but he bites his lip at the array of dark alleys once they exit the building. “Everything looks different when I move this slow. I left Cisco by a wall of boarded up windows, half a block long.”

 _Shit_. That’s the old theater, probably the first thing to be abandoned in this part of town given its patchwork shambles. Len laid low there a night or two when he first arrived. It's more than a few blocks away.

“Come on,” he hisses, snatching Barry’s hand. He never expected an encounter with the Scarlet Speedster would mean dragging Barry behind him because he was moving too slow. 

The forced physical contact is nice though, easier to dwell on with everything reduced to a normal sprint instead of lightning speed, even if it’s just the touch of their hands, skin against red leather. 

Len takes a deep, calming breath once they’ve cleared the first street into an alley he knows well, whether in this world or his own. It’s only when Barry looks at him with wide eyes behind his cowl that Len remembers their hands are linked. He means to pull away but Barry tightens his hold and smiles like the first rays of sunshine in this dim, diluted, dead-end world. 

“We missed you, Snart. I’m glad you’re okay.”

All the old feelings Len thought he’d buried push to the surface, something he thought he’d come to terms with on the Waverider as a hopeless, pathetic crush he needed to drowned in something else. He tried to change his destiny for Barry. He succeeded because of a myriad of other influences, but everything began with the fastest man alive and Len has been playing catch-up ever since. 

He doesn’t know how to respond so he simply nods and counts the seconds listening for patrols of grunts that are too afraid of Hail to refuse anything he orders them. Or worse—for Mick or Sara, even Hartley. Maybe Frost or one of Lisa’s other lackeys. Any of them would be a disaster to encounter while Barry is powerless. 

“You stay close and you stay quiet.” Len looks directly into Barry’s eyes, wide and green and earnest. This Barry would have been eaten alive in Bart’s world. Bart is made of different stuff deep down, darker and dense, or maybe losing his sanity was the only way he’d been able to survive. 

For days in the beginning Len was able to avoid people. Now every direction he turns, leading Barry through winding streets, stumbles them upon the lowlife metas of Hail’s city. Len can’t let any of them see Barry, because they’ll know the suit’s too red. Bart won’t let this Barry live if he finds him. All the terrible tales of how he could have killed Len will come to fruition against this ‘ridiculous’ version of himself that he think so little of. 

Len’s fear for that has him reaching to hold Barry back against walls, safe behind him. Everything of Len’s world had been fading, distant like a foggy memory or a dream. Barry is the last remnant left and he refuses to lose it. 

“You’re acting like these people are cannibals,” Barry whispers, half in annoyance, half with honest fear when they pause around another corner, waiting for a pair of metas—is that Scudder and Dillon? Len hardly would have recognized them—to leave and open safe passage to the next building. “I can take care of myself, powers or not.”

 _Not here_ , Len thinks. “Might as well be cannibals for what they’ll do to you if they see your face and learn you’re not _him_.”

“You mean this world’s me? What about him?” Barry presses, at the worst possible time to get curious, because they need to keep moving. “Was I the one keeping you prisoner?”

“Wasn’t a prisoner anymore. There was just nowhere to go.”

“There was a _cage_ —”

“It doesn’t matter,” Len growls, spinning to face Barry. “You don’t need to know about him. You don’t _want_ to know.”

Barry’s expression is stricken, young and frightened for all the ways he thinks poorly of himself and wonders if this other him on an alternate earth lives up to his worst fears. “What did he do to you?” he asks. 

No. _Never_. 

Len turns back to be sure Scudder and Dillon are gone before yanking Barry after him. “Nothing I didn’t eventually ask him for,” Len says, even if he felt low and less like himself every time he did. 

They make it to an empty building close to the theater, but Hartley and Mick are across the way, blocking their path. They’re there on purpose, Len can tell. Out in the open but camped out with a roaring fire to light the alley that Mick ignited with a wave of his hand. Bart knows Len is missing by now and he’s looking for him, probably has sentries everywhere, biding his time with a terrifying sense of patience for someone so far gone. 

Staying in one place could be a death sentence for them both, but when Len starts to map out a path around the flames to reach Cisco another way, Barry’s knees give out and he sinks against him. 

“ _Hey_.”

“I-I’m okay.” Barry tries to stay on his feet, but his legs tremble and Len has to lower him to the floor. They’re in a dark building, like everywhere else in this world, upstairs on the second floor to better look down on Mick and Hartley’s location. 

Len pulls Barry into an alcove hidden from view of the windows and entrances. He rests him against the wall and pushes the cowl from his face. His skin is pale and eyes distant. It’s been hours. “You need to eat.”

“Yeah, but…it’s something else too.” Barry cringes. “I thought I’d start to feel better, get my speed back, but whatever they hit me with, I think it’s getting worse. I’m slowing down. We need to get to Cisco.”

“We can’t risk it. If Mick sees us…”

“They’re that dangerous?”

 _Worse_. Len's expression must say enough because Barry doesn’t press. “I’ll find food. Got used to scavenging. Don’t move. Mick and Hartley will leave eventually. They have to. Then we’ll make a break for it and Cisco will get us home.”

Barry nods, still ever trusting, still optimistic. Len lost any sense of hope so long ago, he forgot what the sensation feels like. 

He leaves Barry and scouts the area, careful not to wander too close to Mick and Hartley’s camp. Moving purposely slow to listen for patrols, the only person he really worries about is Sara. If she found him, he’d never hear her before she struck a blow. Len would wake up back in his gilded cage with Barry’s head on a pike to remind him of his place. 

Bile rises in his throat but he swallows it down, finds a stash of food from some squatter long gone. It’s not much but it’s calories. He returns to find Barry dozing. The color returns to his cheeks after he eats, but that won’t last long. 

“Sleep,” Len says. “By morning they’ll be gone. We’ll be home free.” Home. Free. Neither word has held any meaning since Len’s been here. 

They rest and they wait while the general darkness gets blacker with nightfall. Barry shivers, still unwell from being depowered. He shifts closer to Len until they're leaning into each other's bodies. The sigh that leaves him speaks of instant relief, while Len struggles not to tense and move away. He’d felt the same way on the ship, when he and Sara almost froze to death. 

“You’re pretty warm for someone who calls himself _Cold_ ,” Barry chuckles. 

Len missed this kid so much, he eases into the contact with less struggle than he expected. Barry’s head rests on his shoulder and Len lets his cheek brush against soft, unruly brown hair. 

“I like the outfit too. Suits you. Though there are colors other than blue and black, you know.”

 _Smart ass_. “Wasn’t given much of an option. How’d you find me anyway?”

“Cisco did. He vibed the cold gun. The Legends thought you were dead but when they brought the gun back…” They’re pressed close enough together for Barry to graze his fingers along Len’s thigh. “I hated thinking you were gone. It was all my fault.”

Len eyes the gloved digits touching him like Barry never has before, tentative but intimate. “How ya figure that?”

“I told you that you could be a hero. You listened. And it got you killed.”

“Yet here I am.”

Barry’s fingers splay across Len’s pant leg as he slowly moves to take his hand, digit by digit until they’re tangled together. Maybe Len is dreaming, because Barry would never seek him out in the dark. He expects Len to climb his way out and find the light, and even then, Barry burns too brightly for him to touch. 

“I’m glad,” he says, like he means it, like he really missed Len. 

Had Len been blind and overlooked the signs that Barry wanted him in return? He should pull away and squash that idea now, because if it's true, Len shouldn’t want it. He’ll end up ruining Barry like Leo ruined Bart. But he’s weak and he’s lonely and for once the comfort of another’s body doesn’t leave him expecting disaster. 

“Me too, Barry,” he says. “Me too.”

They fall asleep resting upright, hands clasped. Len hasn’t slept deeply in longer than he can remember, and he feels refreshed when the muted sunrise is what wakes him. He rouses Barry and makes him eat the remaining rations he saved. They have to move. 

Barry is stronger than yesterday, even without his powers, which is more than Len had hoped for. His speed would be more useful, but Len is happy enough that he doesn’t have to carry the kid. 

They make it to the ground floor, see the embers of Mick’s fire and that the coast is clear, but when they reach the next building and all they have left is to cross the warehouse and exit into the alley to reach the theater, Barry grips Len’s coat sleeves to halt him. 

“Wait. We don’t know what’s out there. If Cisco’s still waiting. If they found him.”

“Barry—”

“I know he’s okay. I believe he is. But I can’t run and I’m scared and I don’t want to waste another moment not doing this.”

“Doing what—” Len starts but Barry is already descending, pulling him close and reaching a hand for the back of his neck. 

It’s the strangest sensation to kiss lips he’s tasted a dozen times yet he knows these lips are different. Everything about this kiss is different, maybe because for once, Len sinks into it and pushes deeper by his own power. 

This is _Barry_ who wants him. Barry in his bright red suit with gold trim, so young with the cowl pulled back, fresh and vibrant like Len never thought he’d know in his life of gloom and sharp edges. This world Bart built, the world that built _Bart_ , should have felt like home, but Len always sought the sun, like Icarus who was too much of a fool to know that he’d doomed himself until it was too late. 

Len holds Barry like he never did his fierce doppelganger, tenderly and riveted by their connection. The kiss is full of emotion Len might have choked on if he wasn’t so starved for anything real, anything resembling what he lost. For now, he gets to have Barry, even if it only lasts a moment and they’re caught as soon as they step outside. 

The pair of metas were either too stealthy for Len to sense them coming or he was too enamored by Barry’s kiss to notice until they are joined by rushing feet. 

Len tears from the kiss and pulls Barry against his side as he whirls to face this new threat. He doesn’t know the metas who appear but one of them shimmers with an aura of shadow and the other lifts up to hover an inch above the ground. 

“Apologies, Hail,” the hovering one says, “we know you said you were not to be disturbed no matter what, but intruders landed a ship inside our territory.”

Ship? Barry only mentioned Cisco. Had the Legends come as backup when he and Barry didn’t make the rendezvous point?

He risks a glance to gauge Barry’s reaction—his likeness to his double could still save them—but what he finds on the face he had so longed to see again causes him to loosen his hold and pull away. The fury in those hazel eyes is like palpable heat, face twisting into a half grinning snarl. 

Bart flashes away from Len’s side and snaps the neck of the meta who spoke. “No matter _what_ ,” he spits like venom. 

The other meta backs off, too terrified and untrained to know that he might stand a better chance if he stays still. Len can only stare, feeling sick and hollow, because there was no Barry. Only Bart.

He tells the other meta to watch the ship and report back, “I’ll deal with your insolence later,” then stalks back to Len with a slow stride. “Maybe someone’s here to save you after all.” 

Len can’t move when Bart crowds in close, wholly different from moments ago, so obviously Bart and not Barry. But he hadn’t seen the lie. He’d wanted it too badly. 

“Don’t you see,” Bart traces a red-clad finger down Len’s cheek. He’d listened well about the costume, but as Len looks at it now, he sees the flaws, the subtle details that are wrong. “He doesn’t want you in your world. He’s a fool. He doesn’t know what he has with you in his life. But if you stay, I can be him for you. And you can be Leo for me.”

His lips press to Len’s and the taste of bile returns. Len only kisses back because he wants to remember, wants to hang on to the lie that for a brief span of time he had a way home and something to go back to. 

Almost before the kiss ends, Len finds himself in his old cage. Bart didn’t wait for an answer. He has a threat to deal with, a ship that Len knows can only be his friends, finally here to rescue him. He can’t feel any sense of excitement or hope at the prospect. Not anymore. He sits in the middle of the cell like he had that first day he was put there. 

For the first time in a long while, Lorna peeks her head around a corner. She smiles benignly as if to say, “See. I told you.” But what life can there be after this? How can Len’s friends face a monster like Hail when they couldn’t even defeat Savage? Maybe by now, they have, he doesn’t know, but they aren’t prepared for the wrath of a broken god. 

Len lost the ability to feel time ages ago. He isn’t sure if its minutes or hours that go by before a din of noise interrupts the quiet and his cage blasts open with a burst of flames. 

Mick, Sara, and _Barry_ all appear, looking as they should in their hero best. But he’s seen them all in this world too. He can’t trust his eyes. He never could. 

“Leonard?” Sara says when they swarm inside the cage. 

“Get off your _ass_ , Snart,” Mick gruffs out. 

It seems like them, but how does Len know for certain?

He backs up across the floor when Barry moves closer. He can’t take the lie again, he can’t. 

“Snart?” Barry says, crouching in front of him like approaching a wounded animal. He pulls back his cowl and Len forces himself to assess the details. All the things Bart got wrong, they look right on Barry’s suit. And Sara’s face…it isn’t empty, yearning for chaos. This world’s Mick would never agree to a charade for Bart’s sake. 

Barry reaches out a hand…and Len grasps it. 

He’s already issuing orders as he’s pulled to his feet. “Now. Fast as you can, kid. We have to get out of here.”

No power dampening gun exists, or if it does, Barry wasn't hit with it. He has his speed and he uses it to get Len back to the ship. Then he runs out again to return for Mick and Sara. All the while, Len stands at the top of the ramp to make sure everyone makes it back. Once they have, the rest of the crew who’ve been fighting off attacking metas, start to retreat. The coast is clear and Len impresses upon them that they have to leave. 

One by one the others rush past him into the ship, some pausing to pat his shoulder or to offer a friendly nod, but Barry is the last, looking around to be sure they haven’t forgotten anyone. He turns to Len with a smile, cowl back in place, the true Scarlet Speedster beaming from his win, just as a torrent of lightning hits him and he’s thrown across the street. 

“Barry!” Len cries, racing out of the ship before the others can stop him. 

Bart’s there, vibrating in his fury, red suit dark as blood with menacing silver and his lightning sparking hot and white around him. He rushes Barry before he can recover, slams him against the wall of the closest building, and drags him to the other side of the street in a blur that leaves kicked up concrete in a line across the pavement. 

Len saw the footage of what Zoom did to Barry. Somehow this is worse. Zoom wanted to play, but Bart is out to kill. 

“Stop!”

“Mine!” Bart howls. “He’s _mine_!” and punches Barry at high speeds, again and again, shocking him with lightning that never seems to end. 

Len readies himself to plead, to beg for Barry’s life like he never would have for his own, but two figures fly past him before he can speak. Raymond in his Atom suit. Firestorm burning bright. There are no other metas coming to help Hail, and Len realizes through his panic that Barry doesn’t need to be faster. He has something Bart doesn’t. 

_Friends._

Len watches from the base of the ship as the three of them tag-team to take Hail down. Barry is faster than Len remembers, zipping around Bart in a frantic dance, avoiding blows with masterful spins and feints, even enjoying himself like Len always adored about the kid. He and the others are more brutal than they would be normally because Bart won’t let up, won’t let them be merciful when he would never show mercy. 

Raymond blasts him several times. Firestorm has burned off large swaths of his suit. And Barry doesn’t stop raining blows until Bart falters and can no longer stand. 

“Stay down,” Raymond says with the whir of his photon canon threatening to fire again. 

Bart tries to get up regardless but it seems even he isn’t invincible. He collapses back to the ground.

Len doesn’t move from his spot just off the ramp into the ship, even when Raymond and Firestorm pass him and try to coax him back inside. It’s only when Barry steps into view that Len wakes like he’s been drowning for a long, long time. He turns and walks side by side with his former nemesis onto the Waverider. 

“No…you can’t leave! You can’t leave me again, Leo! I need you!” Bart calls to him, frantic now, crying instead of angry, like a mad child believing his whole world is ending. 

Len knows this is their only chance, because if Mick or Sara finds them first, even if they aren’t Bart’s _friends_ , the fight will escalate and they might not make it out. But when he lifts his eyes to look at Barry beside him and sees the shock there from the words Bart has thrown at them, Len knows the dream has to end but he owes more than a turned back to the man his other self left behind. 

He walks back down the ramp and stoops at Bart’s side. 

“Please, Leo…I love you.” Bart reaches for him, cowl torn and charred from his face. “I love you…”

“I’m not him,” Len says, refusing to take Bart’s hand. “And you’re not Barry. You have to move on.”

“I can’t…I can’t… Please, stay. I can be him for you. It’s what you want. I can be just like him, I _showed_ you. And all I ask is that sometimes…you be Leo for me.” He’s crying and tragic and still so wild in his eyes like a raging storm. “I can make you happy. He doesn’t want you. He’ll _never_ be with you.”

Len can feel Barry at his back, having followed him from the ship. “I know. But I can’t be what you want. I don’t belong here. I’m sorry.” He means it as he stands and heads back to the ship without meeting eyes with any of his friends, especially Barry.

Bart doesn’t call out to him again, but his sobs follow Len until the hatch of the Waverider closes.

They take off and no one brings up what they saw or heard in the dark streets of a world with the wrong vibrations and pale light. No one says a thing but simple words of gratitude that Len is safe when they thought they’d lost him. 

But it’s a small ship, and after Mick has finished grumbling and threatening to punch Len for taking his place at the Oculus, after Sara has looked at Len with more sympathy than he ever wanted because now she knows how often he’s loved and not had it returned, he’s bound to run into Barry. 

He tries to slough it all off, to pull on his bravado and his drawl like a favorite coat, and keep his words teasing. 

But Raymond appears from around the corner and says, “Hey, Barr, heard about the engagement. Congrats! You and Iris make a great couple.” 

He hasn’t noticed Len, but when he sees him, he gets that dopey puppy look that belittles all of his genius. Fumbling for the right words that never come, he scurries off. 

Len wants out of the clothes that were never his. Wants a long shower and to sleep for a year. Wants a burger and a drink and something to hit. But what he has in the corridor of the Waverider is Barry Allen’s pity. It chokes him. And he almost— _almost_ —wishes they’d never come to save him. 

“Hey…Snart…”

“Thanks for the rescue, kid,” Len cuts him off and moves swiftly past him. “Need to rest now. Been a long few months.”

“Yeah…uh, okay. I’m glad you’re safe. Really. And I’m…I’m sorry,” he adds quietly.

There’s a light at the end of the corridor that doesn’t belong. The ship is in the temporal zone waiting to jump. They’re in the space between the ebb and flow of Time itself, so Lorna can go home now, become her true form again, whatever she or it really is, without having to wear Len’s mother’s face. 

But one last time, she steps into view, a golden figure that is painfully beautiful to look at and reminds Len of the few happy memories from childhood he can still recall.

He only halfway looks behind him so Barry doesn't see the moisture blurring his vision, but he can tell the kid’s eyes haven’t left him. He can’t see Lorna. Only Len can. 

“Me too, Barry,” he says before the light dims. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the last time we will see Hail.


	3. Chapter 3

He never thought he’d miss the dim, off-colored haze of the light from that other world, but some days, home is far too bright.

It’s the dreams. Do people dream in color or black and white? Both? Len thinks he knew the answer once, but whatever is true for most people, for him every dream is muted, not monochrome but still cold.

It’s the smiles that are almost sweet beneath the mania. The eyes that lose their focus only to snap to him like a blade cutting air, and he can even hear the whoosh and feel the breeze.

It’s the hands that take and _take_ and…hold him. _Held_ him. Clung like a lifeline—like a fault line about to wrench apart into two broken halves.

He never screams, barely even gasps when he wakes and the colors are all wrong—not wrong, just different, just back to normal now. He breathes and searches to remember a time when he could hold himself together without anyone else’s…strings.

_I got no…_

That’s the last thought Len ever wants to have. But there are so many strings. Be bound to nothing, tethered to nothing, like some morbid monk—ha! Len’s strings just start lower, unraveling from his heart, not his hands. Once he could count each thread. Now it’s all tangled. Now he’s tied and bound and cut to ribbons.

He should have stayed. ( _He couldn’t stay.)_ They might have been happy there. ( _He would have drowned and kept on sinking.)_ Bart needs him. ( _That need was warped and wrong and killing them both with drawn out slices of their skin.)_ Len’s lonely. ( _He’s so lonely.)_  

Surrounded by people when in Bart’s world there were so few left, Len feels more alone than any hour spent in solitary in that cage or Bart’s bedroom. They all try too hard in their own ways to test his wellbeing. Mick by ignoring it, falling into old patterns and urging Len toward heists that don’t offer the same flavor of exhilaration. Lisa by smothering him, not wanting him out of her sight most days after thinking him dead and gone forever. Sara by subtly trying to get him to talk about what happened. Raymond by less subtly doing the same.

They all know. What they didn’t overhear themselves, Barry’s told them by now. They all _know_. They all pity him like he’s some fragile doll that was shattered by Bart’s lustful madness, when Len was the one who gave in, who allowed it, who sometimes still contemplates going back.

Textbook case of getting too invested in one’s captor. What a joke.

“You need closure,” Raymond tried one morning. “When Anna died—”

“No one died for me, Raymond.”

“But you lost someone—”

“I was freed from a prison, you’ll recall. Do you want more than a thanks?”

“No, I…” He stumbles so easily, never one for banter or someone who can counter his good ol’ boy routine with facts.

Len left the room after that but the facts remained.

Closure. How the fuck does he get closure? He was all messed up before Bart messed him up further, enough to imagine returning to captivity instead of breaking free from it. Enough to yearn, still, after everything, for his version of the boy-God who could be king and what little he’d seen of him in Bart during those rare, lucid moments.

Len died for Barry. He lived for Bart, even against his will, tumbling onto unfamiliar pavement by the hand of Time. Now, he’s caught somewhere between—death and living, brightness and muted color, home…and the looking glass.

Missions and heists and even time away from it all with Lisa means he hasn’t seen _that face_ outside his dreams in weeks. His melancholy increases like a volume button on high—louder, _louder, (I GOT NO…!)_ —and somehow he has to be fine, just fine, all fine, thanks, because he’s on his way to STAR Labs and they’ll _know_.

Barry called him. And oh that voice stopped Len cold, dead, dull. _Not him, not him, not him._

“Whadda ya need, Scarlet?” he managed to say evenly, like nothing could move him, especially not a pretty face and prettier voice in a heroic package that could be monstrous with only the slightest alteration.

Team Flash needs his help. Of course they do. Something strange happened, something only he can enlighten them on, though Barry didn’t give the details.

“You need to see for yourself,” he said.

Now Len was almost there and he had to play the right part. Because he was fine—fine, FINE. Not tangled in strings, broken, dangling, and still waiting to be rescued when he’s been home all this time.

Cisco’s face is the first one Len sees and it’s oddly pale. He barely speaks, just drops his eyes and nods back through the glass of the med room where Barry and Caitlin are gathered. There’s a body on the bed—dead, Len knows, because it’s covered head to toe in a sheet to hide the reminder that something lifeless is there. Len never understood that. It just makes the lack of life more obvious.

“Someone I should know?” He cocks his head as he leans against the doorframe, all snark and indifference.

Barry’s in civvies with his arms tightly crossed, Caitlin in her lab coat. “You tell us,” Barry says.

They pull back the sheet—and it’s déjà vu, because Cisco is right outside but he’s also lying on that table. Half his face looks like mincemeat and his neck is bruised from being broken.

“What makes you think I know him?”

“Because he came from the world you just left.”

The floor opens up and Len has no idea how he stays standing. He raises an eyebrow like it means nothing. “How ya figure?”

They show him the footage, still in the med room, even though out in the main area of the Cortex would be roomier, but Cisco’s out there and obviously shaken to have seen his own corpse. Most people don’t get the pleasure.

There’s a street cam or two, different angles on a corner where a portal opens in swirls of blue and white like waves. Four figures exit in rapid succession. Mick. Hartley. _Frost_ , because that isn’t Caitlin, no way about it. And finally…Lisa. Len only recognizes her because Bart’s description was so apt; he never saw her himself.

She’s gold through and through, even blond, but that is clearly Lisa’s face.

The street is mostly dead but they still own it as two sides to a war move like a single body out of eyesight to descend upon a brighter, unsuspecting Central City than the one they’re used to.

“There’s more,” Caitlin says and switches to newer footage, barely an hour later—and only an hour ago.

Again the portal opens but this time two figures appear. The Cisco lying on that table—and _Hail_.

Len’s dreaming; he has to be dreaming.

“It gets a little…brutal from here.”

There’s no sound but Len can see the way Bart and Not-Cisco argue. Len doesn’t remember a Cisco from that world. Lisa must have had him or found him, then Bart found him next.

Not-Cisco wants to go home, but Bart needs a way back. Lisa must not have cared or counted on finding the Cisco here, but Bart wants certainty, wants fealty that the breach jumper won’t give him. He opens a portal to escape, but Bart is on him in seconds, trying to reason/threaten in his own special way. Not-Cisco resists.

Wrong call.

Bart snaps one of his elbows the wrong way but that doesn’t stop the man from fighting. He has all the fight in him of the Cisco here and blasts Bart back with his good arm. But the speedster is back in seconds, slamming his pretty face into the pavement too hard and dragging him the same way he dragged Barry weeks ago, only without any super healing to protect him.

Not-Cisco struggles to get up and crawl away when Bart releases him, but Bart isn’t really letting him go. He snatches him from the ground and pins him against a wall, demanding one last time for obedience. Not-Cisco spits in his face, and Len doesn’t want to watch anymore, he knows what’s coming, what must be coming, but he can’t look away either as Bart snaps the man's neck so fast it stays sideways.

Teetering back, Bart let’s the body slide down the wall, seeming startled that he brutalized his own way home, like it had been reflex more than intention. But eventually he straightens, calms like the deadly eye of a storm, and takes off in a flash of white lightning.

He could be anywhere.

“We’ll find him,” Barry says. “We’ll find all of them.”

Monsters have descended and Team Flash doesn’t understand the gravity, not really. It had been too easy defeating Bart before, because Raymond and Firestorm were there, yes, but also because Bart was near-starved and exhausted. He hadn’t been in top form. They don’t know what he’s capable of.

They leave Not-Cisco behind to congregate in the Cortex and discuss what to do. Iris joins them, because of course Barry called her too when he learned of a new threat to the city. He wants all of his family in one place, which still leaves the detective and the younger West.

They talk of having Len summon the Legends and his Rogues, while Barry gathers the rest of Team Flash, but they’ve only just begun to plan, only a paltry group of five, when it dawns on Len that while Lisa and her team likely know nothing of where to look for him, Bart knows everything. Because Len told him.  

Alarms blare through the Labs, cutting their discussion off.

“Something just blew through our security like…” Cisco trails and pauses the mad flying of his fingers over the keyboard because he knows the words he hasn’t spoken. Like lightning. Like _Barry_.

Barry flies to Len’s side, holding his hands out without touching him to keep him calm, which feels like the most awful reminder of that night when Barry gently took the cold gun from his fingers like he was some _child_. “Don’t worry. I won’t let him hurt you again.”

“Hurt him?” continues the same—but _not_ —voice. “Why would I ever hurt my beloved?”

There is no lightning trail, no fanfare, Bart’s simply there, prowling slow and curious along the wall toward the open doors where the Flash suit is kept. He’s in his own suit, cowl pulled back, but it looks so much more like Barry’s now, like he altered the design when he replaced the one Firestorm burnt and purposely copied what he’d seen on Barry. Aside from the colors that are still a deeper red and silver instead of gold.  

He drags his gloved fingers along the wall and reaches for the suit but doesn’t complete the act to touch it. Instead, he recoils and looks back at them with a sneer. “It’s so bright here, Leo. How do you stand it?”

Len can’t move, because he’s between Bart and Barry and it feels too surreal. Then suddenly Barry’s in front of him, arm out to keep him protected.

Bart smiles as though Barry is oh so quaint and foolish for thinking he can deny a god what it wants. Still, he plays along and circles the room, eyeing Caitlin, and Iris, and—

“ _Cisco_ ,” he says eagerly, which makes Cisco stand up like he wants nothing to encumber him from running if he has to. The other Cisco is still visible in the med room with the sheet no longer fully covering him. “Unfortunate,” Bart nods at the body. Then grins terribly. “Unfortunate he wouldn’t _kneel_. But you’re much more reasonable, aren’t you?”

Barry zips to being in front of Cisco and the others as soon as Bart stalks their direction. But Cisco, foolish, _foolish_ boy, thinks that means he’s safe.

“Ya know what, I am reasonable,” he says over Barry’s shoulder. “You want me to open a portal to shove your ass through it, pal, you don’t even need to ask.”

Len’s stomach drops while Bart laughs and _laughs_ , not joyful, never joyful, simply mad.  

“Oh that otherworld humor. How I missed it,” he says—and in the pause between breaths, Len is against the wall, with Bart’s body on him, eyes wild and lips leaning forward. “But not as much as I missed _you_.”

A spark shocks Len’s lips as Bart is wrenched away, and all Len can see is white and yellow lightning whirling around the room, tossing papers and chairs, and forcing everyone at the computers to huddle tighter together. Len has to get a grip. He has to _get a grip_.

“Stop!” he cries, yelling at blurred lines of bright color that expand into people again with Bart holding Barry to the wall only inches away from him, hand vibrating with the fingers pointed like a spear. “ _Stop_.”

It’s only because Len is the one asking that Bart listens. He stills his hand but keeps a forearm pressed to Barry’s throat. “All I did was attempt to steal a kiss from my sweet prince. He’d be a king by now if not for you.”

Barry snarls, “This isn’t a fairytale. And if it was, _you’d_ be the villain.”

Bart laughs again. “So lofty in your ideals, Flash? But I know all your stories. Not all paint you in such a pretty light.” He hovers and waits with a patience Barry hasn’t learned yet before he sinks back all at once and lets Barry go. With a roll of his neck, he looks at Len, then at the body in the med room. “I truly did not intend to kill him. He should have obeyed.”

“No one here is kneeling to you,” Caitlin says with barely a waver in her voice.

He regards her inquisitively as he stalks around the room again, occasional sparks of lightning jumping up his suit that keep Barry on edge, never knowing when he might next use his speed. He isn’t predictable. He’s too mad for that.  

“Are you so sure?” Bart says, enjoying the huddle of Caitlin, Cisco, and Iris that moves as a unit to get closer to Barry. But it’s Iris his gaze lingers on. “Her eyes pierce right through me. Perhaps she knows when a god should be worshipped.”

Len expects Barry to flat out punch him for that, but he merely moves between Bart and the others and growls, “You stay away from her.”

Bart tilts his head, ignoring Barry entirely to better look at Iris. “I see now. Are you his?”

“Excuse me?” Iris scoffs.

“Such a lovely ring. Leo painted ice into my scars with a tempered needle to overturn my healing when he asked me to be his betrothed. But that’s quite charming too.”

The clever reporter has no comeback to that.

“Okay…” Cisco says. “Disturbing. Awesome. Hey, _Crazy_ ,” he snaps his fingers. “Thanks for the visit, now it’s time to scram. I’m gonna open a portal. You’re gonna go through it. Then we’re gonna mop up your psycho friends and send them in after you. Got it?”

“ _Bart_ ,” Len barks when a shock of lightning travels all the way up his arm. “You don’t touch anyone here. Do you understand me?”

Bart turns to him with all the fury gone, flip of a switch, mad as a hatter. “Of course, my love. All bluster and no bite, I swear. Now come.” He reaches for Len, the other hand gesturing back at Cisco. “This one can send us home. Let’s leave this place. Lisa will forfeit this world when she learns you are gone. You don’t wish to see your sparkling city scuffed by her power, do you?”

It wounds Len how much Bart believes he’ll take that hand. “I’m not going back with you.”

“Then I’ll stay here,” Bart says without falter, looking young and filled with wonder as he looks about the Cortex, which only makes Len shiver harder. “It will take some getting used to, of course, but I could enjoy your world, all shiny and new—”

“No, Bart. You don’t belong here.”

“I can help you,” Bart says more desperately, smile and sanity flickering. “Help you catch them. You know how easily I could kill Lisa—”

“You’re not killing anyone.”

“I only meant…” Bart tries to smile more sweetly to appease Len, “if I could take her life so easily, surely I can catch her for you. You can’t expect to take them all on, even Mick who abandoned me, thinking he can end this war if he has you as a boon to offer, with only one poor excuse for a speedster on your side.”

“We have more than one speedster,” Barry says.

“What?” Bart spins half around to face him and this time the wonder is real. “ _Where?_ Leo,” he looks back at Len frantically, “why didn’t you tell me there were others?”

“I’m _not_ Leo. And I didn’t know about the others until I got back.”

Bart is split between his deep desire for his long dead husband and the promise of others that might have made his childhood less lonely. “Show me,” he begs of Barry. “ _Please_. I’ve never met another like me. Please let me meet them. Is she one?” he flickers out of focus and appears in front of Iris. “Is that why he favors you?”

“I told you to stay away from her!” Barry’s cry makes Iris flinch more than Bart’s presence as he grabs Bart and spins him around to seize him by his suit. “You _killed_ someone. Someone with the face of my best friend all because he told you no. And you think we’re going to play nice?”

The white and yellow lightning erupts again and vanishes, completely gone from the room. Len panics, rushing toward Cisco, who flies to return to his computer. He’s already pulling up camera footage before Len can demand it—of the Pipeline.

“He caught him off guard. He got him,” Cisco says in triumph.

Len watches Barry throw Bart into a cell, giving him only enough time to slam against the glass when he tries to escape before the door shuts him in. “No. You’re not keeping him in there,” Len says.

Barry returns with a rustle of air. “He needs to cool off. And so do I. You shouldn’t have to see him, Snart.”

There he goes again playing hero, but with the anger and rashness of something else.  

“You got the same damn face,” Len snarls at him, and hates himself for the way he turns his wrath on Iris. “And more in common than you’ll admit.”

Barry looks stricken. The others silent.

“Get a line on the rest of them,” Len says, pulling out his cell phone finally to call in the cavalry, “before they blow up half the city.”

He knows no one will follow him with the same confidence that he knows his sister will answer on the first ring.

“We’ve got trouble,” he says, as soon as he hears an answering click.

“Fun,” Lisa says. “Flash and friends?”

“In a manner of speaking. I need you to gather the troops with every precaution. Don’t go by faces or voices – do you understand?”

“Lenny, what’s going on?”

“Above all else, Lisa, listen very carefully. Don’t trust anyone wearing your face.”

“Alright,” she agrees, for once without argument. “We’ll be at home.”

 “I’ll meet you there. Just have some things to square away first.”

 Len looks over his shoulder to make certain no one has proven him wrong by following him, then clambers up to the first camera set up along the Pipeline. It’s easy work to disable it and the others like it into a 47 second loop which should be more than enough to keep them calm upstairs.

 He finally stops in front of the only locked cell and scoffs lightly at the pad and controls that stand beside it. They never truly modified the Pipeline into a proper prison in any sense of the word – not even to contemplate that someone standing outside might be willing to let a captive free.

“Beloved,” Bart sighs contentedly from the far corner of the cell. His voice is distorted and it makes it easier to bear when it isn’t whispering right into his ear.

“You should tone it down with that,” he drawls out. “You’re liable to make Miss West jealous.”

“She’s a gem,” he coos, like an old lady over tea, “but she could never hold a candle to you. How could he choose her?”

“I’m not his type – now are you going to relax or are we going to have a problem?”

If there are a few things he knows about Bart it is that he will play the part when he knows he has already won the game – and Bart always wins the game.

“I am here to do whatever it takes to have you at my side. If that means taking up arms with that fool wearing my face to send Lisa back to our Earth then that is just icing on the cake.”

“You will not harm anyone on this team or anyone that you are not instructed to—”

“I am your weapon, to do with what you deem necessary. Aim me, darling,” he says, draping himself on the glass, “and only then will I strike.” 

Len looks into the man’s crazed and earnest eyes. “Your word, Bart.”

“On my love for you,” he says, with a smile and a hand over his heart, “I swear.”

Len hates himself for wishing that could be enough. That anyone could hold him to the level of adoration that Bart claims he does. But he knows, he must remind himself, that none of it is true. That it isn’t him Bart would fall on his sword for.

“I’m gonna need better.”

Bart’s face hardens, offended by being called out on his ever going theater. But he levels with Len all the same, “Fine, then. On my husband’s grave, I swear.”

It’s even easier than disabling the cameras to override the authorization needed to open the cell door.

Bart is positively chipper as they move out of the Pipeline to the living levels of the Labs. He takes to the power-dampening cuffs around his wrists as if Len had gifted him jewelry for their anniversary.

The juxtaposition of captor and prisoner in flipped roles makes Len’s steps falter, always distant from Bart as the childlike speedster skips about to explore, occupied until Len figures out how to explain to Team Flash that this is the new norm, and then he can escape to meet up with Lisa. He should have told her to expect a long wait. How can he leave after impulsively freeing the worst monster of them all?

When Bart settles on the cafeteria and starts raiding the place, Len knows he should leave him or at the very least keep watching him from afar, keep that distance between them, but without much consideration he takes a seat at the kitchen table and stays.

 "I’m surprised," Bart says, legs swinging under the table like a child, the last remnants of a sandwich crumb being flicked from his mouth, "it did not escape my notice that you, my dearest, have been avoiding me despite remaining at my side."

 Len glares across the table. There really isn’t any reason he should stay. Perhaps he doesn't trust Cisco's contraption all that much. He tells himself he's only making sure the bastard doesn't run before he passes him into Barry’s care.

"What gave it away?"

“I knew you would be drawn to see me again,” Bart says, suddenly smug, “and I knew you would not stand to see me treated that way.”

“I have some personal principles against underground prisons, no more no less,” Len says.

“I saw the heart breaking in your eyes when you appeared outside my cell,” he whispers. “I saw you remember us – every touch and gentle word—”

“Yeah,” Len sees the crackle of muted electricity in Bart’s eyes and he remembers, “and every threat and accusation and painful—”

"You can lie to yourself all you want but you will not shrug off all that is between us," Bart says across the table, half threat and half plea. 

"All that is between us is your dead husband, Bart," Len says, more like a sigh. 

The other man leans back and that wicked smile paints itself on his beautiful and terrible face. "Is that jealousy speaking?"

"What are you doing out here?" the same voice cries from behind Len. In less than a blink, Barry is at Len's side, pulling him a safe distance away from his other self. 

Bart glares, the irony of his own jealousy hot between them. "Quiet, you shrill thing. My beloved has released me from your pathetic little dungeon,” he spits out, "and you say I am the treacherous one among us."

Barry glances at Len with that easy hurt of tired betrayal. "Snart doesn't have the access to let you out and even if he did—"

"Relax, Scarlet," Len murmurs. "I don't approve of that creepy torture prison you have, doesn't mean I'm an idiot."

As if to prove Len's point, Bart raises his shackled hands, the glow of the manacles indicating the dampening effect on his powers. 

The look of betrayal on Barry’s face turns to puzzlement. "Those were locked in... Where did you get those?"

"Where did I get those? How did I let him out? It's like you don't know who you're talking to, kid," Len teases. It makes Bart's glare grow harder. 

Barry frowns at Len and then levels Bart with a glare of his own, his tone steeped in disbelief, "And I’m supposed to believe you put those on willingly?"

Bart's eyes turn from Barry to Len. His voice lowers into that soft seductive sound that haunts Len's dreams and nightmares, "One does not break a promise made to one's own heart."

An almost imperceptible shiver travels through Barry’s shoulders as he asks, “Why do you have to talk like you’re doing Shakespeare in the park?”

Bart sneers without taking his eyes off Len. “What on any Earth you see in him I will never understand.”

Len’s attention is divided between the two identical men, so he doesn’t miss the way Barry blushes at the comment.

“Come on, Snart,” Barry says after a pause, “we can find somewhere more…humane for him to be but he can’t be roaming.”

What Barry means, of course, is that Len shouldn’t be hanging around his former captor without supervision, because Barry is the kind of man who cares too much about scars no one can see.

Bart begins to rise in his seat but only just enough to spit out his words. “He was only repaying a kindness,” he says, his voice rising with each syllable, “you artless, ill-begotten—”

“That’s enough,” Len snaps.

“For him you have voice,” Bart accuses.

“I know you’re already batshit crazy but you’re not helping your case,” Len says, turning to Barry. “What he means is he kept me in a golden cage with a baby grand and an ever-changing library. Because he’s a classy psychopath – aren’t you, Bart?” 

“I accept that I am a prisoner but I expect to be treated at my standing,” Bart agrees.

“Well tough,” Barry says, arms crossed, “you have your choice between the infirmary and the Pipeline.”

Bart sneers, “At the tender mercies of Dr. Snow, I presume.”

Barry mouths the words ‘tender mercies’ as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. It’s almost enough to make Len laugh.

“He’s just doing it to annoy you now,” Len tells him.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” Barry sighs. “Caitlin is a doctor.”

“And I am to presume she’s not a raging bitch like her counterpart,” Bart hums.

“She has her moments,” Len intervenes, “but your world pretty much has the bitchy doppelganger department covered.”

“I tried to be sweet,” Bart reminds him.

“You tried to be _him_ ,” Len snaps, which makes Barry tense and flush darker beside him, but he ignores the reaction – he has to. “Stop being a pain or I’ll have them throw you back in the hole. I need to go out and I expect you to behave until I get back.”

Bart actually has the nerve to pout and turn his face from them as Barry pulls Len further aside.

“He really should be in the Pipeline, especially if you’re leaving. You had no right to—”

“Listen to me, Scarlet,” Len says, low and direct, “if I’ve learned anything from my little adventure it’s that it is very important that you never become him. Sticking by the Geneva Convention is a good start.”

“Fine,” Barry concedes with a fresh shimmer of shame in his eyes, “but those manacles will only hold so long.”

“Barry,” Len half laughs, shaking his head in defeat since there is no way to make the other man understand, “for once in your ridiculous life, don’t be naïve.” He steps away and backs toward the door, ready to take the risk of meeting Lisa and praying that the twin speedsters can go an hour without killing each other. “The only thing standing between him and this city is me.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bart acclimates more to this new world, while Len struggles with what he wants...and how to face Barry finally asking the right questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, but just making sure we give you guys the best possible story while being crazy busy people. :-)
> 
> Working on this 'verse together is the BEST, folks. Hope you're enjoying!

He imagines that someday—not today, not soon, but _someday_ —he’ll step outside, and taking in a deep breath in his city will feel like home again. 

Wasting no time, Len hurries to meet Lisa, Mick, and Shawna Baez, who’s finally had her overdue favor called in. They need to be on the lookout for a group of the most powerful and dangerous meta humans this city has ever seen outside of Zoom. Len didn’t even get to see how things escalated with the dark speedster or how it ended, but he imagines Zoom against Hail would have been a terrible scene, awesome in the original sense of the word, but terrible. 

The only person missing is Hartley Rathaway, who Len intended to bring into the fold, but apparently, Barry made a few tweaks to the timeline while Len was away that haven’t quite caught up to his memories, even though everyone else remembers Pied Piper as playing for the other side now. 

As the only one of them who’s a meta human in this universe, Hartley might prove useful, which is part of Cisco’s duties—to call the boy in. 

Mardon and Bivolo aren’t trustworthy but they’ll need to be watched in case the other world’s Lisa thinks about recruiting. There are other metas as well, ones Len doesn’t know from Earth-2, still at large. That's Shawna's job, to be eyes everywhere and to report in if she sees anything suspicious.

It’s troublesome that the breachers haven’t made a move yet. Len knows so little of this other Lisa, but the four doppelgangers are no doubt smart, dangerous, and out of their element, which makes them far more of a threat if they’re lying low to bide their time. Len can’t risk being in the open for too long, or he'll end up the pawn they want him to be. 

While the Rogues hit the streets to gather intel, Lisa and Mick planning to report in at STAR Labs once they're done, Len heads back to ensure Bart isn’t causing trouble. Mick will check with the Legends, though another mission is looming to take them away soon, and Len almost prefers that. At some point, stacking the deck just means more targets.

“Hey, Caligula!” Len hears from Cisco as he's rounding the bend into the Cortex, entering to see the engineer chucking a pile of clothes at Bart's head.

“Is that a slight, breach jumper?” Bart snarls as he snatches the clothing from the air, only to sneer at what he’s been given—jeans and a blue T-shirt. “You expect me to wear this?”

“What do you normally wear?” Cisco asks, keeping his distance from the cracked speedster, likely because he’s the only other person present. Len’s surprised Barry would dare leave his double alone with anyone, least of all Cisco, who has a dead double of his own by Bart’s hand. Then Len sees Caitlin and Iris through the glass window of the med room. 

“Bart’s earth is more Hot Topic chic,” Len says, leaning against the doorway with an exhalation of relief at what he’s found. At least Bart isn’t placing any heads on pikes. 

Bart lights up at the sight of him, and that shouldn’t make Len’s stomach flip, but _Barry_ has never looked at him like that, never would, never will. And it’s nice for a moment before Len remembers the rest. 

“Meaning bondage wear?” Cisco mocks. 

“Meaning gothic,” Len tilts his head at him, then moves into the room at a leisure pace, knowing that if he didn’t, Bart would encroach on him eventually. “Continue to behave,” he nods at the wild-eyed boy standing in his black and silver suit with modern contrast in his hands, “and maybe I’ll bring you something more to your tastes.” 

Bart sneers once more at the clothing. “I am not some mongrel begging for treats.” 

“Yet you pout like you want one.” 

A flick of Bart’s eyes stop Len cold, because he knows that want, that laser-focused desire. “There are _some_ treats I miss.”

“Oh no. _Nope,_ ” Cisco pushes between them, waving his hands. “None of that. Barry said to keep you two separated.”

Of course he did, Len thinks with a roll of his eyes, which will only entice Bart further if it’s Barry’s rules he’s breaking. 

For now, Bart ignores the mention of his double and fixes Cisco with a fierce stare, more playful than menacing. “Do you not recognize love between men?”

“What?” Cisco blanches. “That’s not it! I don’t recognize love between…James Caan and Kathy Bates.”

Bart doesn’t get the _Misery_ reference, but he still scoffs. 

Looking once more to the plain clothing he’s been handed, Bart raises his cuffed wrists as if to indicate he can hardly change with them on. But Len knows this game too. Bart isn’t waiting for Cisco to free him, just ensuring a captive audience. 

With a grin, the mad king pretending to be a pauper twists his wrists and coils his arms up his chest like performing a magic trick and then—ta da!—the cuffs click open, dangling from one hand. In a flash of white, he changes into the new clothing and sets his costume on the desk, handing the cuffs to Cisco, who he then holds out his wrists to so he can put the cuffs back on. The boy could almost be mistaken for Barry in the simple attire. 

“You…” Cisco does his best blowfish impression as Bart holds the cuffs toward him. “You could get out of those the _entire time?_ ”

“Leo taught me many things,” Bart says with pride. “But I can play inept if you prefer the illusion.” 

When Cisco turns to Len with a helpless gape and scrunched brow, Len can only shrug. He’d tried to warn Barry. They should all expect the unexpected with Hail. 

Groaning, Cisco accepts the cuffs but waves Bart away. Smart kid. Illusion only makes people think they’re safe when they’re not. 

“Where’s the boss?” Len asks, seeing as how there is one important member missing. 

“Barry took Wally out on patrol to see if they can find any lines on our guests,” Cisco says. 

The childish glower on Bart’s face makes him look so strange, half Barry given the surroundings and his change of clothes, while the expression and lack of focus in his eyes betrays who he really is. “I hardly got to see the boy before they sped away. His name and mere seconds of him in costume was all your _Flash_ afforded me, then they were gone.” 

“You expected more?” Len challenges him, which was harder in the other world, but even though Len knows they’re in just as much danger from Hail here as they would be on Bart’s home turf, he’s more in his own skin than he’s been in months so he pushes Bart whenever he can. “Flash won’t play nice unless you prove you aren’t a threat to his friends.”

“Will you fit me with a muzzle too? Though I wouldn’t be opposed to a blindfold…” Bart’s eyes snap to Len, hooded and unabashed in the way they rake down his body just to watch him shiver. 

Len takes great effort to _not_ shiver or react in any way, but that amount of self-control means he isn’t prepared to move when Bart approaches him. 

“Don’t make me get a spray bottle for you, _Nega-Barry,_ ” Cisco steps between them again. He’s getting bolder with Bart too, overcompensating for his terror maybe. Wagging a finger in Bart’s face, he scolds him, “Bad psychopath. Mind the Snart bubble,” and gestures around himself like he makes up that buffer all himself.

“I’ve told you,” Bart regards him like staring down an insect, “I will do him no harm.”

“Like you did no harm all those months? You kept him like a _pet._ ”

Len jerks forward to yank Cisco back, certain that if he hadn’t, the short-statured engineer would have found himself on Bart’s eye-level very quickly, hanging from a vice grip on his neck. The lightning sparking around Bart like a Tesla ball singes part of his T-shirt, and Len feels Cisco tremble through the hold he has on his arm. 

“Watch your temper,” Len commands as he pushes Cisco behind him, “or this all ends now. No matter how much carnage you wreak, he’ll still beat you and throw you back home without ever letting you see me again. Is that what you want?” He doesn’t have to say ‘Barry’ or ‘The Flash’. Bart knows. He hates Barry, that much is clear, but he won’t risk being deprived of his favorite toy. 

The lightning dims, flickers away as Bart pouts once more with the ferocity of a child, just like everyone in his off-color world. “I offered you everything.”

“You did. But they don’t know you. Things work differently here. They want to protect me from what they don’t understand. So help them understand why they shouldn’t fear you.”

“They _should_ fear me,” Bart rises up taller, lightning in his eyes now as he looks at Cisco, then at Caitlin and Iris peeking out of the med room to see what’s going on. 

_Damn it_ , Bart doesn’t understand, maybe never will. But Len still wonders, like a madman himself, if he can reach the sense that used to exist in this boy’s twisted mind. Maybe it’s for selfish reasons, because part of Len isn’t ready to lose Bart yet despite how tangled and cut up he feels being near him. 

In the beginning, even after that, through the middle and end too, Bart reveled in taunting Len with threats and dark promises, but sometimes he could be sane and sweet. Sometimes it was nice to hold him in satin sheets. Sometimes Len forgot to be afraid or homesick.

“Do you want me to fear you too?” he asks.

The clarity that fills Bart’s eyes always hurts more than his outbursts or ravings, because it’s a brief vision of who he was, of the boy Len never got to meet. The boy Leo loved and ruined. 

Ozone, wind, and yellow sparks signal the return of The Flash and his young apprentice. The tension snaps. Cisco rushes over to join Caitlin and Iris, who gather around Barry and Wally as a team, united together in terror of the dark side they can’t accept could very well be in their Barry too.

The speedster heroes didn’t find anything in the city, no sign of Lisa or the others anywhere. 

“Speedsters are the most powerful of meta humans,” Bart interjects, practically flaunting his untethered wrists for Barry to frown at. “Other metas on my earth learn to outsmart us however they can or get cut down quickly. You will not find my sister-in-law by patrolling like common police.”

Barry folds his arms over his scarlet chest. “Obviously, she’s outsmarted you before now.” 

An ominous smile spreads across Bart’s face. “I let her live for Leo’s sake. I could end her whenever I choose. Give me leave about your city, and I will track them down for you.” 

“Not a chance,” Barry dismisses, while Wally looks on like an estranged spectator, unsure of the danger in someone who looks so much like Barry, not having been privy to Bart’s behavior like the others. “When we find them, then we’ll let you know how we’ll use you, if at all. Until then, I’m not letting you have the run of my streets.” 

Bart bristles but holds back from lashing out, casting a quick glance at Len. He wants to be good because he wants his prize. It should bother Len more that part of him longs to give Bart everything he’s asking for, like he’s some puppet unable to control his destiny. 

_I got no…_

_NO._

Pushing aside the familiar tune that springs to mind, particularly the way Bart's voice sounds singing it, Len tries to focus on the present, but every time he looks at the boy-god, he’s drawn once more into the past.

Thanks to Bart's stories, Len knows all about Leo Snart. He'd taken about half as many beatings and never met his mother. He'd had the superficial affections of every working girl in town while he was growing up. He'd never stolen out of hunger, no one ever told him no, and he was spoiled. 

Len isn't one to back down from speaking ill of the dead, but he'd never met the man. The only thing he truly resents him for is his part in creating the nightmare that is Bart. How much he must have twisted the younger man around his finger to break him so thoroughly with his death. Len is certain no one will fall to pieces for him when his time comes. Surely Lisa will mourn him and Mick... Len can never be sure about Mick. Not after all that has happened. But they'd both be fine without him, that much he’s certain of. To make oneself the irreplaceable core of another person, it's a type of cruelty Len has a hard time wrapping his mind around. 

He watches Bart stare with poorly disguised wonder at the group of heroes that unknowingly flaunt their comradery. Bart's eyes follow West's children and Barry, Cisco and Caitlin, and openly covet what runs between them. Len wonders idly if Bart can name the feeling, or if what he had as a consort never afforded him the closeness of family. 

It doesn’t go unnoticed that for once Bart's attention is focused elsewhere as Len leans against the desk beside him away from the close-knit group. "It's like an after school special on the power of friendship, isn't it?"

"I want to run with them," Bart whispers, unable to tear his eyes away from Barry and Wally in their shiny suits.

"If you're a good boy..."

"How dull," he groans. “Are you certain I can't lead them on a little chase? No one has to get hurt."

"You can chase your sister-in-law to your heart's content once we've got a plan ready. Chase her right out of my city."

"I want to know what it is to run beside another speedster," Bart huffs, "not my bore of a sister who will only stain my new suit with that miserable fool's gold of hers."

"You mean melt it into your skin with molten metal—"

He scoffs, "She'd never get close enough."

"I wouldn't provoke The Flash into another tussle if I were you."

"He wouldn't be any fun anyway," Bart shrugs, "but perhaps the child..."

"Pretty sure Flash would take you prowling around his kid brother as a similar affront to stalking Miss West."

“Ah, now _she_ would make a marvelous speedster, don’t you think?” He regards her closely.

Len shrugs off the sting of jealousy from Bart entertaining any closeness with Iris, which is petty and ridiculous, and of course Bart notices.

“Rest easy, my beloved. My eyes are only for you.”

“Lucky me,” Len says, but the derision he tries for falls flat when he wonders about being luckier, about having a Scarlet all to himself, who’d love him as intensely as this boy loved the man he lost, and like Barry loves Iris.

“Are we late to the party?” Lisa announces herself with Mick in tow, and Bart straightens, on alert but curious as he takes in the faces of people he knows well. 

“More echoes?” he asks, moving like a graceful predator to stand between Len and the newcomers. “Tell me, Flash, is it really so easy for anyone to flounce into your territory?” 

Team Flash is hardly jumpy to have Rogues in their midst while the heroes have their masks off, but Mick already knew Barry's face. They're all strange friends now. 

“They’re allowed to be here,” Barry answers, though his slight frown gives away some concern, “and they’re more welcome than you are.”

“I’ve no doubt, but I do doubt the ease with which the faces of our enemies are granted safe passage. I would have proof.”

“Proof?” Lisa asks, nearly pouting. 

“Proof that you’re not his evil sister-in-law,” Len explains. “Why don’t you show us what we fought about on your fifteenth birthday, Lise.”

Looking half smug and half worried, Lisa turns on her heels and lifts her shirt. Mick moves, in a bored but instinctive motion to stand in front of her so that only her back is exposed to the room. Her skin is covered in angel wing tattoos, slightly faded and poorly done but somehow lovely against her skin which is puckered in scars obscured by the ink. 

“That's enough,” Len says, watching with narrowed eyes as Bart prowls closer to her. “You can see it isn’t her.”

“How?” Barry asks. “How is that proof?”

“Darling Lisa,” Bart says, still hypnotized by the two in front of him as Len’s Lisa throws her shirt back on, “her Mark runs like stars bursting over her spine.”

Barry looks as if he has a thousand questions to follow that, but Bart pays him no mind.

“You didn’t need proof for Mick,” Len says, and Bart grins without turning around.

“He protected her,” Bart says simply, looking Mick up and down. “Leo’s Mick loved only he until his little princeling came along. He would never move an inch for Lisa lest he was told. Fascinating to see you brunette, sister,” he switches focus effortlessly, though Mick clearly has questions about this ‘princeling’ that Len might have to explain later. “The two of you are also without power? Unfortunate. You might stand a chance if you had your hands to use instead of guns.”

“Shit, Snart,” Mick grunts and eyes Bart up and down. “You weren’t kiddin’.”

“Trust me, sweetie,” Lisa pats the weapon at her side, “I can do plenty with my gun, and without it.”

“Listen, Flash,” Len addresses Barry before this encounter gets too off the rails, “you don’t want to let Bart run wild, fine, then let’s make use of my team.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Bart says before Len can explain what the Rogues have done so far.

“And why not?”

“Lisa will not suffer anyone with her face. Mick either, especially not once they learn that the versions here are mere mortals. You send them to their deaths if you leave them out there alone, and I know how you love them, for Leo loved them too.” There’s a curl of Bart’s lip, a touch of distaste, not liking that he should ever have to share Len or Leo’s affections.

The risk was obvious to Len, but there are so few people he trusts as completely as his friend and sister. “Who else do we have?”

Mick contacted the Legends as promised, Cisco called Hartley, and as the growing group discusses their options, the Cortex grows quickly suffocating. It’s a whirlwind of people and plans and ideas before long. 

Bart hovers quietly all the while, quieter by the moment in such a large group, something he isn't used to anymore— _company_. He watches, stalking around the Labs, surprising people who initially mistake him for Barry before they remember—Barry is red, Bart is blue, per Cisco. Color coding them makes it easier to differentiate good from bad, right from wrong. So typical of heroes. 

But Bart _behaves_ is the key, and when the Cortex is quiet as various parties split up to search the city, he follows Wally and Barry to the Accelerator where they practice their speed. Len remains his vigilant shadow, a reversal of their time in the other world. 

Bart speaks to Wally with quiet urgency when yellow lightning first exits the makeshift track. “I bet I could beat you, child.”

“Yeah?” Wally grins, all cocky confidence with his youth and love for his still new powers. “I’m faster than Barry now, you know.”

“Hardly a feat,” Bart circles him with catlike inhumanness. “I am not Barry.”

He really isn’t.

Barry stands off to the side and nods when Wally seeks permission. Bart's been good for hours, so Barry will give him this. And while Len expects Bart to be smug about it, he instead can’t contain his excitement to be allowed to run with someone like him. 

He and Wally square off before the entrance.

“You’re Hail, right?”

“My love named me. Unexpected as a storm and a compliment to his ice. What do they call you?”

“Kid Flash.”

“ _Kid_ Flash?” Bart’s lip curls again, causing Cisco who’s passing through to stop as the resident expert on names. “What an insult for such power, especially if you outshine him. What about—”

“—no, no, no, you don’t get to—“

“— _Impulse?_ ”

Even Cisco pauses at the suggestion before continuing out of the room. “That’s actually pretty good.”

Len agrees. Though maybe not for Wally West. 

“And perhaps instead of yellow to contrast your colors…” Bart’s grin widens before he flashes away, returning in seconds in his armor, “ _silver._ ”

Mimicking Bart, Wally pulls up his cowl, admiring the darker colored suit beside him. “Silver huh? Let’s see if you can beat me, _Hail_ , then we'll talk. Ready?”

“Go!”

The rush is instant, and it’s beautiful to watch the white and yellow shocks of light mingling in an endless cycle. 500 revolutions before they stop and they can do that in moments. Len and Barry watch them from opposite sides of the large room with its high ceiling leading into the speedster track, Barry with trepidation, Len in wonder that he feigns he doesn’t feel. 

One speedster was miracle enough, now Len comes home to two and has another chase him. He’s learned of other speedsters as well doing work in other worlds, someone named Jay Garrick with Henry Allen’s face, and a young woman who goes by Jesse Quick. It’s a brave new world that Len can watch a pair of lightning bolts race. 

Bart zips out of the opening first, by a fairly large margin given how fast they both are, and the spectacle of it all is chilling because Bart is _laughing_ —normally, not sounding unhinged but truly jubilant. When Wally materializes next, he is just as giddy. 

“Come now, my _impulsive_ friend,” Bart nearly sings. Len has never seen him like this before. “You can do better than that. Let’s go again.”

“You’re on.”

They ignore Barry and Len, get back on the line, and then they’re off. Repeating the sequence several times, Bart wins again and again, though Wally gets closer each time to catching him. 

While watching the races, Barry slowly makes his way across the room until he and Len are no longer an audience for opposing teams. Barry wants to say something, wants to talk, so Len holds his attention forward to avoid what he senses coming. 

It’s a good thing too, because at long last when it seems about time to tell the two to put their running on hold, Wally _wins_ , and Len jerks forward, afraid of how a defeated Hail might respond. 

Only there’s nothing to fear. Bart doesn’t care. He cheers Wally on, still laughing. He’s having too much fun. 

“Come on, man,” Wally pats Bart’s shoulder, no trace of the fear or avoidance the others have shown him, “we need to replenish our energy so we got enough left for the bad guys.”

Someone might need to explain to Wally that Bart _is_ a bad guy. 

“May I, jailer?” Bart turns to Barry with a scornful bow. 

Barry paints more the picture of disapproving parent right now, which is fitting, seeing as how one of the few people missing is West, who actually has to attend his day job. “Okay. But be careful.”

Wally smiles, nods, but he doesn’t understand the gravity, because again, he hasn’t seen Hail’s true face like the rest of them, maybe doesn’t believe it even if they’ve shared stories. It’s his _brother’s_ face, after all, his mentor and friend. 

“So uptight,” Bart clicks his tongue, putting Barry at his back to address Wally directly, who he has taken to as if he never had a friend before. He didn’t, Len knows. He only had Leo and a coterie. “He never runs with you, I bet. Race you to the kitchen, _Junior_ ,” he jokes, and one after the other, they zip off to feed their massive appetites.

Len should follow after Bart. Barry should follow too and look out for his brother. But he holds still and traps Len with a stare. This conversation is one Len wishes he could avoid forever, building ever since they got on the Waverider and Len headed off to rest instead of facing it. 

Barry knows. Everyone knows. But the Scarlet Speedster still needs confirmation, to understand, to compute the insanity he’s seen and can’t reconcile with this world. 

Infinite universes. In one, they might have been born in different centuries. In another, they might not even exist. But Barry needs to rationalize this anyway to feel in control when so much of his life is chaos. Len can relate—just sucks how much it stings. 

“Get it out already, Scarlet. This elephant’s gonna be big enough to ride soon.”

Barry snorts but loses any semblance of a smile, arms crossed like a shield. He’s still in The Flash suit, cowl drawn back, with Len more casually dressed in slacks, a sweater, and a long coat he should have taken off by now but he prefers the comfort of layers. 

“What were you to each other?” he finally asks. 

So PG. “Captor and captive, obviously,” Len says, no reason he should make this easy. 

“Did you sleep with him?”

“Now that’s the part that chafes, doesn’t it? Yes, Barry,” Len leans into his space, “we fucked. Frequently. Every night, in fact. Multiple times, on occasion. Sometimes during the day too. That speed sure does make you boys insatiable. He could hardly get enough of me.” Len is sneering as he says it all, but he’s not overplaying; none of that is untrue. 

How green Barry has turned shows he understands that. “Did you want to?”

Len almost says something vile - _is that an offer?_ But he’s sick of this already. “Never told him no, if that's what you’re worried about.”

“If you had, would he have listened?” Barry presses. 

“ _Yes._ You want to say I didn’t have agency to choose for myself, go ahead. Didn’t think I was ever coming home. He offered a pretty face and a warm bed. What was I supposed to do?” What was he supposed _to do_ when everything he ever wanted said it wanted him back just at a cost—of Len’s soul maybe and the rest of Bart’s mind.

“I don’t know,” Barry says so quiet, Len almost can’t make out the words, but he pieces them together in the way Barry averts his eyes and hugs himself like he’s the one who should feel ashamed. “Why didn’t you ever…tell me?”

There’s the truth finally. This has nothing to do with Barry worrying Bart took advantage of Len—oh, it does, because Barry cares, he can’t not care, but he also can’t imagine caring as much as Bart appears to. He can’t imagine a world where he _loves Leonard Snart_. Len can’t imagine a world where he loves himself either, so he can’t really blame the kid. 

“Would it have mattered? Nothing about us could ever be a fairytale ending. Case and point.” He nods in the direction Bart went. “Guess you dodged a bullet.” 

The hum of the room, of the entire building, chases Len as he walks away, tailing Bart after all, because where else can he go when it isn’t safe to leave? 

Lisa’s enjoying the seclusion, fawning over Ramon. Mick fits in well with the Legends now, so he’s content to keep company those left behind here while others keep watch over the city. 

Len sees that Jax isn’t one of the ones on patrol when he reaches the kitchen, because the young man is sitting with Wally and Bart, swiping meager snacks from their large spoils, chatting with them both like nothing about this cross-section of people is odd. 

A newly empowered meta human, a time traveler who’s half nuclear, and a god from another world. 

They’re all talking easily and enjoying each other’s company like Barry is their same age, and in some ways he is, because the people of his world never quite leave the drama of pubescence. Right now, Bart is reliving some of what he was denied growing up. And he looks so happy. He looks so much like Barry. 

He sees Len in the doorway and that 1000-watt Allen smile could power the whole building. 

Zipping in front of Len, with an apple in one hand and several bites taken out of it, Bart presses a kiss to Len’s cheek rather than attempt to steal his lips, and the ice in Len’s veins warms. 

“I never want to leave here, Leo,” he says, and all Len can think as the boy skips back toward his new friends at the table is… _fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many things to mention, like playing around with gothic looks for Bart's normal fashion, with Lisa being like something out of the dark fae court. And of course loving the version of Wally West in a silver suit. 
> 
> Also, people have mentioned time travel and why hasn't Bart tried to use that to save Leo. Well...he doesn't know he can, and that will come up soon. 
> 
> We appreciate every comment!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, a sign of where to find the Lisa and her crew from Earth-17 presents itself, but not before Bart loses his cool a few more times and needs to be assuaged as only Len can, tipping him further down the well he's drowning in, and maybe...just maybe he's about to hit bottom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at us getting another chapter up so fast!
> 
> We hope it comes across well here that the nature of this relationship, much as we both love the complications of it and dear psycho baby Bart, isn't nice or healthy or at all okay, yet it is what it is, and Len has a hard time fighting what he has with Bart when it is almost, almost what he wants for himself.

“I don’t understand how impossible they are to track,” Cisco nearly growls.

Len finds it curious to see him so frustrated, like the boy has grown too used to cooking up solutions at the drop of a hat and having a fix for everything.

“They should be vibrating at the same frequency as Freakazoid over here,” he continues to mumble, “but nothing is registering.”

“I think we all need to rest,” Caitlin sighs as she rubs her fingers over her eyes and looks about the room. Everyone is in some state of disappointment, boredom, or fatigue – everyone except Bart that is, who has been playing video games in the makeshift lounge they setup just off the Cortex with Wally and Jax for the past three hours.

While Barry had been concerned about the easy friendship between Bart and his brother, which made him reluctant to leave when Iris suggested the two of them head home, they had all quietly agreed that if it kept Bart busy, they might as well go with it. Barry had left perhaps a bit too easily, too ready to be far from the madness that surrounded Len, while Bart is absolutely taken with Wally. So long as that is still true, the boy should be safe.

Cisco makes a noise of protest and declares that he only needs more coffee, but finally agrees that no one is in top form anymore and they should all take a cue from Barry and Iris and reconvene with more energy the next morning.

“We have a lot of space, but I don’t know if we have _this_ much space,” Cisco says as he takes in the size of the remaining crowd. They’d all go home if they felt it safe, but Iris and Barry moving at a whirlwind speed back to their apartment is easier to stay off the radar of the metas from another world than most of them can manage. It’s best if they camp out in the Labs.

“We’ll head back to the Waverider,” Sara says before turning to Len. “We—”

“You can’t hover here too long,” he says, cutting her off, “I know. Figured Mick caught you mid mission.”

She gives him a look both impatient and fond.

“We were. And we really need to get back on it, though we’ll keep a line open with Gideon in case you find them and need reinforcements. But when this is done, Leonard - we’d like you to come on board again, you and Mick.”

Across the room, Len’s eyes meet Mick’s. It’s still so jarring to be a room and a world away from him. Len thinks no matter how many times he comes back, comes home, whatever broke between them is too shattered now. That other life was good practice, because that other Mick looked right through him without any recognition at all. But to see something similar in Mick’s eyes now, his Mick, it’s a hollow pain that he doesn’t want to deal with. It’s an ache not dissimilar to the one he feels around Bart, to claim something that he shouldn’t want and probably doesn’t deserve. It takes all his will power to tear his eyes away from the other man.

“Mick can do as he likes but I’ve gone as far as I’m willing,” he tells her. “Appreciate the offer though.”

She nods as she walks forward, uncrossing her arms and keeping her movements slow. Len is all too aware of the eyes in the room and of the muted sounds of gameplay and laughter coming from just a little ways away. But when Sara reaches out to touch his cheek, he doesn’t take his eyes from her and the rest of the room melts away.

It’s easy to feel too much around her, just as it had been before. Around Sara emotion never felt like weakness, and part of Len still craves that. Just like part of him craves what had always held constant between him and Mick, and another part craves the wild adoration in Bart’s eyes. Just like a relentless part of him wants things from Barry Allen that he can never quite name. So much of him wants such precious and different loves – but he doesn’t deserve an inch of them. If he took them, he’d eat them alive.

It’s been a long time since the lightning surprised Len, but this time it catches him off guard. Sara, on the other hand, defends herself with her swift assassin’s calm, so that by the time the pair is visible again, one of her swords is flush against Bart’s throat even as he holds her up against the wall furthest from Len—just like he held Barry earlier that same day. And Iris had been so certain Bart would be well-behaved in Barry’s absence.

“You insolent little whore,” he spits, “you’ve no right to lay your hands on him.”

“ _Bart_ ,” Len bites out, stalking across the Cortex to reach them, “step away from her.”

“I should have known others would swarm around my absence,” he continues.

“Bart!” another voice calls, and Len’s eyes flash quickly to the doorway into the lounge to see Wally looking confused and more than a little distraught.

“Stay away from him, kid,” Len orders. It’s a slight relief to see the boy listen as the rest of the Waverider’s occupants gather around Bart and Sara, Jax included, who moves past Bart from where he’d been holding a controller until the air shifted.

“I am not,” Bart says through gritted teeth, “going to kill her.”

“Not before I kill you,” Mick assures him, gun pressing right up against Bart’s spine. Consumed in rage as he was, Bart became sloppy and easily entrapped.

“Is this who you were really trying to get back to?” Bart growls, eyes still locked on Sara’s unflinching gaze. “Was all your infatuation for that insipid carbon copy only a ruse to keep my good will?”

“Just step off and they’ll all be gone,” Len bargains.

“I can make certain of that myself.”

“Look at me,” Len says as he lays a hand on Mick’s shoulder and nods. Mick, perhaps out of habit or some remaining faith, pulls up his gun and steps away. “You said you won’t kill her then turn around and threaten her again. Take a breath. You promised you wouldn’t hurt anyone here, remember?”

Bart’s eyes are wet with angry tears as he whispers, “Did she have you?”

“Bart,” he whispers back, “look at me. Let’s walk away from this, you and me.”

Sara’s sword remains steady even as Bart marginally loosens his grip.

“Get them out of here, kid,” Len calls over his shoulder to Wally.

He feels the wind move like small self-contained tornados behind him for a moment as the Waverider crew is taken back to their ship, Mick included, though Len knows Mick isn’t leaving with them, and Cisco and Caitlin are whisked off to who knows where as well, before Sara disappears from the Cortex, upheld blade and all.

The room is empty except for them, the way Bart wanted. The way Bart wants the whole world to be, despite his posturing for a need of other speedsters in his life.

“You said there’d been no one,” he says, still staring at the wall where Sara had been, furious and heartbroken.

“No I didn’t,” Len answers, “and you never asked. But there was nothing there.”

“She looked at you with promise,” Bart accuses, shaking in a most human way.

“Fine,” Len admits, “there was that. There was promise. Nothing else.”

“You’re mine,” Bart says with a renewed conviction, turning to him and pulling Len close to breathe it into his ear, “you’ll always only be mine.”

Without anyone to witness or judge, without Barry there to remind Len that none of this is real, it’s easy to fall back into old habits. He nods silently as Bart noses and nips at his neck like a frightened wolf, vulnerable and dangerous.

“Say it,” he insists, hands digging into Len’s sides so much like claws, so much like always, “say you’re mine.”

Len swallows, breathes, tries to keep steady as he takes the angry god’s hands off him finger by finger. “I can’t,” he says, trying to keep his voice steady and sure, “this is the real world.”

Bart’s hand is at his chin, forcing his eyes onto his surprisingly clear ones, “Say you’re mine, Len.”

All the air sucks out of the room.

Even on that dreamlike day, broken and sobbing for Len to return, Bart had never called out his name. Maybe he really is something more than human, knew that it merited keeping this in his pocket for a rainy day. Like a storybook, Len’s name in that mouth has irresistible pull, and just like that he is lost to Bart—to Hail, to the dream.

“I’m yours.”

Lips meet and the will to resist drains away

Even coerced and manipulated to be what Bart wants of him, Len can’t see himself as a victim, because he’s too far gone, too lost in the parts he wants and asked for himself. Which makes it worse, makes it so much worse, and yet…

Len knows telling Barry that it was all oh so consensual and sordid isn’t the full truth, but part of Len likes the illusion. Part of him doesn’t care about the bad times when he’s caught up in the good. Part of him believes he deserved the rare sparks of anger and violence in Bart that made him numb and long to be done with everything, while the rest longs so much more for those even rarer moments when the light didn’t seem so dim.

Because he keeps thinking…if only he can keep the clarity without the madness. If only he can have the Bart that Leo once had before the boy lost his mind, and for Bart to want Len instead of a ghost, maybe that’s the beginning. Maybe that’s their beginning.

If any of the others were still present, they would have stopped him, but Len and Bart are alone, and this kiss and what it leads to reminds Len of the first time he had Bart all to himself.

-

_Bart doesn’t believe in personal space, Len got that message loud and clear the moment they met. Still, he expected to die defending his own virtue much earlier than this. Bart has never done this before, not in all the weeks that ran like months and felt like years. Len watches him carefully as he stalks around Len’s piano – which he only plays when he is absolutely sure the speedster is out of the complex. It’s no use, Len knows, Bart hears him play regardless._

_He watches and waits, allowing himself the wicked pleasure of watching Bart’s bare back, keeping track of the soft movements under his skin as he reaches and skims over the keys too lightly to make them clink._

_“Come to ask for a serenade?”_

_Bart turns slowly, or at least slowly for him. Bart never made an effort to appear human the way Barry did. You got used to the lightning or you didn’t, it was of no consequence to him. But now he turns slowly enough for Len to see the hem of his silk pajamas skim the ground._

_“It is you who must ask,” he says, with a soften version of the passion that permeates all of his words._

_“Ask for what? To be let out? What would be the point of that?”_

_“You can set all your bravado aside. I know you are frustrated by your confinement, and I know you understand there is no use in…running,” he says, with sharp and short giggle._

_“Doesn’t take a genius,” Len replies._

_“And yet you are one,” Bart grins, “but no. You needn’t ask to be let out – you are perfectly free.”_

_Len doesn’t allow himself to revel in that victory because there isn’t one, not really. And if there is, it is entirely Bart’s. Bart always wins._

_“Perhaps you need some time to explore your new home more fully, before you are prepared to ask,” he says, finally tinkling some keys._

_“Ask for what?” Len demands again._

_The lightning is hot and bright, but not as hot as the touch of Bart’s skin on his own._

_“Why, to be let into my bed of course,” he practically sings._

_Len takes great care not to react to those words._

_“Very worried about consent, are you?”_

_“I’ve no interest in your body,” Bart lies, his voice smooth and burning, “I desire your desire.”_

_He disappears in another quick and bright flash. The word dances and hits against the corners of Len’s mind. Flash. He finds that every day that life seems further away; that life, that world, that hero in red. It’s as if they aren’t quite real every time he forgets._

_He takes to his new freedoms with care, in full knowledge that his captor is petty and everything can and will be snatched away. None of this is new to Len._

_As if to tempt him, Bart makes himself purposefully scarce. When he is around, he makes it a point to prance about without his Hail armor, clad only in soft fabrics that accentuate his edges and the inhumanness of him. Of course, Len has plenty of practice in clenching away the desire to reach out for that body, those hands, the boyish contours of that face. None of it will ever be enough to break him. Except._

_Bart’s room is always open, because he is fearless, because he is the Apex and knows there is nothing and no one coming to eat him._

_It is left open, Len knows, in plain invitation to him – so he wanders in when the room is quiet and he expects it to be empty._

_Instead he finds the speedster humming softly. He should know better than to romanticize Bart’s madness, or really anything at all. Soft curtains make the world blurry, make it harder to see the hit coming. And yet. Bart hums and sways almost carelessly, a song that he shouldn’t know because Len makes certain not to play it anywhere near him. And yet he’s heard it. And yet he knows. In that moment he is nothing like Barry, but he is also not the antithesis of him. Instead he is just a man with the broken heart of a boy, humming an old song in the saddest way Len has ever heard and he should know, he does know, much better than to fall for it._

_He can see the sparkling web even as he treads on it, but he also knows he cannot help himself. What is being offered him isn’t what he has always wanted. It isn’t love, it isn’t real, and it most certainly isn’t Barry. But in some small and unimportant way, it is being offered only to him – and to call something his own … well it’s what he and Mick became criminals for._

_“Bart.”_

_The man turns and his eyes, oh they are so very far away that they remind Len how little of this has anything to do with him._

_“Yes, my beloved?”_

_Len looks at the other man like he can see the way his fractured mind wrestles with the sight of him, “Come here.”_

_Bart’s eyes clear, but only slightly, and his body is still swaying to an unheard memory._

_“What’s this, then?”_

_“This?” Len says, mostly to himself. “It’s me asking.”_

_Bart’s smile is electric, enormous, and plainly insane. His kisses, too, are electric – they prickle and burn and send jolts over Len’s body. His fingertips spread the feeling under his shirt and over the marks that are not there. A small part, a very small and unimportant part, he remembers. And yet. Len is asking, to keep himself from begging, to claim what he can for himself._

_He's known Bart’s lips before. The day they met. The first day Bart said he wanted Len to be his king, when Len was still inside the cage but at least assured he wasn’t in imminent danger of having his heart ripped from his chest. But after that, Bart abstained, made Len yearn for what he’d tasted but didn’t own._

_Now it’s his again, the electric kiss and touch and prison that is Bart’s encompassing body. Maybe Len is insane too, for asking, for wanting this, any semblance of what he once desired of a life that only exists in a corner of his mind now. This, here, is reality, and Bart wants him. Len wants too, he’s always wanted, always gone without and pushed himself to take to make up for it._

_“Yes. Touch me as you would have touched him. I want to know what my silly twin has denied himself.”_

_Len is surprised, because he expected to be asked to touch Bart with specific instructions to be more like Leo. It’s a small win, to be himself in this moment, their first time. It isn’t a betrayal to imagine the skin beneath his palms is Barry’s. Bart has requested as much, a worse torture more than an olive branch—maybe, maybe—but Len surrenders to it and backs the boy further into the room until his legs hit the bed and he topples with that wide, mad grin._

_How often does prey fall upon their predator? Because while Len recognizes Bart is playing a scene for himself, imagining someone else pursuing him, he doesn’t delude himself for one moment that he truly holds the power here._

_But oh the noises the kid makes when Len tears his shirt away and touches that impressive lightning scar accented in tattooed ice. It’s haunting. Artwork to be sure, but it displays the pain that must have been involved—and reveled in and celebrated. Len kisses Bart’s lips and neck and scars all the same. He kisses him lower to taste every inch of him, and just as he’s imagining a different boy under his thrall and skilled tongue, he’s brought back to the truth._

_“Leo.”_

_It shouldn’t hurt so much. Len knows he isn’t destined for the great, tragic love story his other self held and squandered, but he still craves the possibility and works that much harder to give Bart every pleasure he can offer._

_Len takes great pride in his hands and what they are capable of—whether picking a lock, rewiring circuitry, or pressing deep and winding into the intimate treasures of this body he never thought he’d possess. Aside from the scars and ice tattoos, Bart is Barry’s double in every way. Len’s never seen him bare below the neck, let alone the waist, yet here he is now, getting the brunette beauty to moan and writhe and spark as though he could lose himself to his speed any moment and flip Len over to take control._

_He doesn’t. He lets Len lead, lets Len marvel at him and how his powers react to being brought to panting passion, which besides the sparks is an occasional blur, a tremble of his vocal chords, or deep vibration that Len can’t wait to feel surrounding him._

_There’s lube to lead the way, but nothing else, why would there be, between a happily, crazily married couple that likely ravaged each other every chance they got? Len pays no mind, knows it doesn’t matter with a near indestructible god, and frankly he doesn’t care. When he sinks into the warmth of his desire, buzzing, tingly from electricity, it is almost everything he ever wanted it to be._

_Here, finally, connected and moving in harmony, Bart’s eyes are crystal clear but still they don’t see Len. He knows who their adoration is really for, and that’s okay, because he slips up too in how tightly he clings to what he wishes he was holding._

_“Barry.”_

_“It’s Bart. Always Bart, like he called me.”_

_Of course. Of course. “You’re mine now too, Bart. Aren’t you?”_

_“Yes, Leo. Always.”_

_It isn’t quite what Len meant, but he’ll take it. What else does he have in this strangely muted world and the light that seems all wrong?_

_When it’s over and they’re lying side by side, he notes the edge of disappointment in Bart that curdles his blood, but it isn’t because of his performance or passion._

_“You are so similar. So similar…” Bart says, staring at the ceiling before his eyes clench closed. “But I miss the ice in your touch.”_

_His touch. His ice. Leo was a meta; Len isn’t._

_“Gimme a glass of ice cubes, kid, and I can make you squirm all sorts of ways,” Len says._

_Bart laughs and throws an arm over his face, but he soon peeks out beneath it to look at Len, all unhinged again, unfocused but somehow centered right on him all the same. “I bet you could. Perhaps that would be fun. You’ll find I’m quite insatiable.” He rolls, straddles Len, pins him—all long, gorgeous limbs. “I may not let you out of this bed now that I have you in it.”_

_Len would have killed for such an offer in his own world, with his own miracle meta. “Might want to hose me off occasionally.”_

_“So crass,” Bart barks another laugh, “So bold. So beautiful,” then kisses him again, deep and claiming._

_It isn’t disappointment, Len realizes, simply longing—longing they share for someone not here, but their ghosts exist between them. Len’s never been much for a crowded bed. Well…rarely. Yet he stays. He kisses Bart and lets him ignite his desires a second time. Today, Len can provide, but his stamina won’t last against a rechargeable battery like Hail._

_What happens, Len wonders, when his likeness to that fool who left Bart alone wears out its welcome and he can’t give the boy-God what he wants?_

_It’s a gamble. Len’s life always is, but if he’s trapped here, then he is going to claim something for himself. Something beautiful and terrible, but something for a brief time that he can steal, even if he’s the one who’s stolen, captured, trapped…_

_And tied up in brand new…_

_I got no…_

_Damn._

-

Damn everything coz it’s all the same. Len falls the same. Tangles up the same. Gives in all the _same_ because he’s lost his mind too, clearly, to ever ask something of someone who is a bundle of threats to simply take—take, _take_.

Clothes are shed as easily as Len shrugs off his dignity and his resistance. Does he have a choice? Could he tell Bart no? Does he even want to? These should have easier answers, but they don’t. They never did.

It’s messy and breathless and a whirlwind like Bart always is. The thin mattresses from the med room become their bed, laid out beneath Cisco’s desk after a spark of Bart being gone and back again, and Len’s parka becomes their blanket. Not that they need much when Bart is a space heater even after he’s spent, with the thrum of his lightning buzzing.

Being in Bart’s arms is like falling into a well that goes on forever with the infinite promise of a deeper darkness. Is that a function of the embrace? Or the one being held? Len’s mind swims in the scent and warmth and pain of electricity and wonders if all along he has rejected his perfect desire because Bart has been filtered through the golden haze of heroism. Perhaps they are a fairy tale that Len has been looking at with disdain.

-

Light and lightning break into the room and Len groans, throwing an arm over his eyes. He doesn’t know when the lights in the Cortex turned off, but he laments that they’re on now. Beside him Bart moves slow and languid, doubtlessly wide awake and pleased with himself.

“Holy – um I – sorry I didn’t think,” the young voice stammers, “I didn’t know you slept here. I mean _slept_. I mean… I’m gonna leave now?”

Len can hear the shameless amusement in Bart’s voice as he says, “Such a blush, Wally. Are you really so innocent?”

“Me – I – what? No, I mean – you’re like _naked_ and…”

“You look like his brother,” Len says, arm still thrown over his eyes, blocking out everything but what he can hear, “and he isn’t sure whether to be repulsed or concerned that he isn’t.”

Bart laughs, loud and powerful just like him. He’s on top of the world again, Len knows, right where he thinks he belongs.

“Right um – can you two like stop…being naked?”

“Certainly,” Len says as he swings himself up as gracefully as he can, in time to watch Wally nearly fall backwards at the threat of more nudity.

“Ohmygod, bye.”

“What would you make of him?” Len asks Bart after the boy has sped away. That smell of ozone is one of Len’s favorites, but it’s different from Wally, unique to the man running. He and Bart are still half under Cisco’s desk, on their nest of mattresses and clothing. “If he were one of your people?”

“I wouldn’t,” Bart says as he rakes his fingernails idly over Len’s back, “in my world he would be dead.”

It takes Bart a breath’s time to make himself presentable, looking deceptively soft and inconspicuous in his jeans and blue t-shirt. His eyes as he watches Len dress much more slowly, remind Len that Bart is a predator, however tame his current temper might be.

From down the hall, Barry’s shout echoes, “THEY WHAT?”

Bart’s grin is wicked, part child and part criminal. It makes Len feel young, reckless, and a little bit high. Despite himself, he grins back.

“He’ll love this,” he mutters.

“I know,” Bart agrees, bordering on glee.

By the time Barry and those with him get to the Cortex it’s difficult to tell who is more upset. Barry is clearly seething but Iris seems near equally displeased. Wally, meanwhile, is hugging himself in some sort of confused distress as he trails in behind them.

Len decides to act his age and break the silence, “Disappointed?”

The fury in Barry’s face crumbles for a moment before it rises once again.

“Not at you,” he breathes out. He turns to charge at Bart and his still present grin when Iris splays a hand over his shirt.

“They’re adults,” Iris says, quiet and tired as if she’s said so before.

“He’s an animal,” Barry insists.

Wally frowns, stepping forward. “Barry, he’s really—”

“Stay away from him,” Barry tells the boy. “Everyone is going to stay away from him.”

“I think you’ve gone a bit mad with power,” Len drawls, “don’t you think?”

Bart outright giggles.

“Snart, this is… it’s wrong. It’s really messed up, and I said I would protect you.”

“I’m touched,” Len says. “Literally.”

“You don’t need to be an ass,” Barry counters, still looking angry but embarrassed.

“He doesn’t need to be protected,” Bart snaps, “not from me.”

“Yes from you,” Barry spits out, “you’re messing with his brain, you’re manipulating him.”

“As thrilling as this exchange is,” Len interrupts, “I am perfectly capable and getting real tired of the hero shtick. Why don’t we all focus on the task.”

Barry huffs, his glare dropping to his feet.

“We have information on them,” Iris finally says. “Hartley’s found them – of all people. Let’s go meet up with him and Cisco downstairs.”

Wally is the first one to take off, followed by Bart, whom Barry stalks after. When Len moves to follow them, Iris’s eyes make him pause.

“Is there something else?”

“Barry is … having a hard time with all of this,” she says to him, “but he really does want to keep you safe. If you’re hurt in any way, he’ll feel at fault.”

“If I walk headfirst into a train with my eyes wide open and Barry wants to throw that on his shoulders too then so be it,” he tells her, “it won’t stop me.”

“Maybe it should,” she says, just before he steps out the door.

 -

“As far as I can tell, they’ve been keeping their heads down,” Hartley explains, “which should probably be concerning. But I took the tracking signature from uh, Bart is it? And I cast it in surrounding cities—”

“Our system should do that,” Cisco grumbles.

“Well it does to some extent,” Hartley concedes, “but they haven’t been moving around much and it is surprisingly harder to track people who are sticking to a single location when you’re using a vibration signature as bizarre as this one.”

“Makes sense, if there’s no trail you have to scan the whole area minutely and—”

“This is fascinating, Cisco, darling,” Lisa says, “but maybe you can just tell the go-team where they are so that I can go stretch my legs outside this lab sometime this year?”

Cisco blushes and stammers and Hartley swoops in to ruffle the other boy’s hair before answering.

“They’re in Keystone,” he tells the room, “hunkered down at the old ironworks.”

“Well obviously,” Bart says, grinning from his perch on the consoles like a particularly proud cat.

“What do you mean obviously?” Barry starts.

Bart shrugs, “You could have asked. I would have saved you all the trouble and told you Lisa’s territories have always been in Keystone, ever since my wedding day.”

“Are you freaking kidding me?!” Cisco spins toward him.

“You knew we had all of our people out there!” Barry overlaps him.

“Just throw Loki in the pipeline before he kills us all!”

“You wouldn’t have believed him,” Iris jumps to Bart’s defense with a serenity Len is beginning to appreciate, “and you would have had to do all of this anyway.”

Barry and Cisco still look incensed while Lisa and Mick look annoyed and impressed.

Hartley mostly looks bored. “I know the temptation to fall into a melodramatic spat is overwhelming but maybe now that we have some information we can get cracking on it?”

“Look at the lip on this one,” Bart says, “that too is a constant.”

 Len eyes Bart carefully as the speedster considers Hartley.

“What is this to you?” he continues to pry. “What…how does the expression go…? What skin have you in this game?”

Hartley looks at Bart with suspicion, but Len can see the boy throw back his shoulders defensively. “What is he, The Little Mermaid?”

“I’m only observing – Jax and that lot followed their commander, beautiful Iris and Wally fall over themselves with love for this one,” he says, shoving his chin in Barry’s direction, “as does the intrepid Cisco and _Doctor_ Snow. But you don’t, do you? You’re not here out of love or duty…so why?”

“Bart,” Len says softly—softly, if only because Bart could be doing worse things than torturing someone who looks like his favorite chew toy from back home.

“What?” Bart says with a smile, a wicked maddened one like so many before. “He isn’t anyone’s. Look how close I am to him and Mick hasn’t even flinched.”

Mick’s head snaps up, as if he’d been all checked out of the situation until he heard his name. It’s exactly what Bart wants, of course, because bringing up mysteries from another world is a fantastic distraction and Bart needs to draw this out to keep himself in power.

“Stop it,” Len says without elaborating, “and tell us what she’s waiting for.”

Bart sighs, looking put upon as he crosses his arms and pouts in Len’s direction.

“She’s waiting for me to take you back with me, of course, to catch us in transit you might say. Likely she missed her opportunity before, the brat.” He rolls his eyes and it’s easy to see in that moment, underneath it all, how fond of her he is. “She’s waiting for me to make you vulnerable so that she might snatch you away and torment me. She might be curious about you, might want to keep you for her own comfort, might want to kill you. Of that I am not certain. She only ever demanded to see you by rights, not by sentiment.”

“Fine,” Len says, clapping his hands together, “we’ll give her bait. Let’s go for a walk, Bart.”

Of course, Barry jumps at that.

“Like hell you will!”

“Sorry, kid, but you’re not the best strategic mind in the room,” Len says with a shrug.

“Hey!”

“You ain’t” Mick agrees, “and you ain’t got the malice.”

“I’m perfectly capable of coming up with a plan,” Barry says, “a better plan than just parading Snart around exactly where those people want him.”

“I don’t know, Bar, you’ve had some ideas that…well…” Iris mumbles with a small smile.

“Hey, don’t knock my man,” Cisco says, “he’s had a few good plans that don’t involve screwing with the timeline.”

Len’s stomach drops.

“Timeline,” Bart says, soft and calm. Dangerous.

“It’s nothing—” Len tries.

“Yeah,” Wally says, smiling like an innocent idiot, “sometimes Barry thinks the best way to fix a problem is to run real fast, go back in time, and try again.”

“ _Wally._ ”

“You jest,” Bart says, still dangerously quiet. “No one can conquer time.”

“Barry’s done it before. Saved the whole city from a tidal wave. And again from—”

“Wally, stop—”

“When? How?” Bart whirls on Wally enough to make him flinch, then whirls again to face Barry with a lick of lightning lapping at his feet. “What was it like? What did you _change?_ ”

For all Len’s stories of home, most involved Barry, and Len’s time with Barry revolved around events long before the Legends. He always made a concerted effort to never mention that the Waverider was a time ship or that The Flash could run so fast, he traveled just as miraculously with only his own two feet.

Wally is startled like he’d been last night when Bart erupted, while Barry glances warily between what Len knows is the absolute picture of madness in Bart’s eyes and the horror in his own. Because what would anyone grab hold of with time travel made real other than the chance to keep someone alive who fate took too early.

“HOW DARE YOU KEEP THIS FROM ME?!” Bart’s bellow cracks through the room like a plate smashing on the floor.

Wally tries to hold him back but Bart swings him away without effort and the boy falls crumpled but still conscious in the frantic seconds it takes for white and yellow lightning to zip across the room. Hartley and Cisco hold still, like clever prey trying to disappear, and Iris gasps. Like a strange chorus line Mick stands protectively in front of Lisa, gun in hand, while Doctor Snow stands in front of him as if her place were somehow between two violent criminals and potential danger. 

“You toy with time at your whim!” Bart accuses as he holds Barry against the wall. Barry, for his part, doesn’t struggle or deny. “Did you save everyone you love? Steal time with Mother and Father too? Have you plucked Iris herself from death? They mock and tease as though you run backwards and forwards however you like, _and you keep that gift from me!?_ ”

Len watches the guilt wash over Barry’s face because he knows the loss that darkens Bart’s heart too well, intimate and choking, but the one thing he’s never lost is his own beating heart like Bart lost Leo.

Suddenly, Barry is no longer pressed against the wall and Bart stands tense and shaking in front of him. For a split second, Len wonders if the outburst will pass and Bart will see reason, but then the boy-god turns, his face a mask of fury that has only been directed at Len once before—the day Bart mistook him for an intentional imposter.

Bart looks at him that way now. “You _knew_ ,” his voice reverberates like an angry storm Len’s direction before the lightning blinds him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always appreciated! Still more to come!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe there are more strings involved than Len thought, just not between him and Bart. And he finally gets to meet the other world's Lisa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry for the long hiatus, but both of us were split in other directions with life and other projects, but well...we're back baby, and ready to take this story through the next few chapters to the end. 
> 
> Thank you for sticking with this!
> 
> Enjoy!

Len doubts he could describe the sensation to anyone other than a survivor of a tornado who'd simultaneously been struck by lightning. It’s a constant rushing roar of white light, wind, and the flip of his stomach, where he’s waiting to end the ride with his bones shattered, neck twisted, or simply to be falling from the top of a tall building while Bart looks on as he drops.

Instead the light is joined by familiar _yellow_ and the vortex continues in a seemingly endless, mad blur until Len’s breath and voice are gone as he’s pressed against a wall with Bart’s hand at his neck, holding him above the ground, while Barry holds onto Bart’s hand to keep the fingers from squeezing.

“Shut the door!” Barry screams, and only then does Len realize they’re in one of the Pipeline cells, the same one he’d released Bart from yesterday.

Whoever is watching obeys and the door closes them in amid glowing blue lights that make everything too blinding when Bart is still kicking up sparks.

“LIAR!”

Len is sure his bellows can be heard across the city.

“ _TRAITOR_! YOU KEEP FROM ME MY ONLY DESIRE AND DARE FLAUNT HIS FACE LIKE A SHADE TO _TAUNT_ ME?!”

“Bart, stop!”

There is pure murderous intent on the boy's beautiful face, and Len doubts Barry can hold him back much longer, not with the rage fueling the other speedster’s strength.

“ _Please!_ Just – would you just _listen_ —”

“AND _YOU_!” Bart shifts with an imperceptible flicker of movement, until somehow, Len remains lifted, but so is Barry, perpendicular to him against the wall. “You will tell me how to do it. You will _show me_ ,” he demands, voice dropping to a furious whisper that makes Len tremble for the madness in it.

Len can breathe but only barely. Barry, for all his power, dangles just as helplessly as he does, and his face betrays the same pleading guilt as before.

“It doesn’t turn out the way you want it to,” he tries to explain, “it never does.”

“You will show me…” Bart’s face contorts further in anger but his grip slackens, on both of them, until they drop from the walls of the cell, though Bart doesn’t yet uncurl his fingers from their skin.

“It could turn out _worse_ —”

“You think I care if the world burns around us if I have him back!?” Bart is no longer fighting, only holding tense and shaking in front of them, hands pressed against them for balance more than offence like he can barely compute the emotions roiling through him.

“But there’s no guarantee you will. Time wants to happen,” Barry says, trying to be kind even now, “it always will. In all likelihood, he’ll die not long after you rescue him or you will or he won’t be the person you hoped for or you won’t be the person he loves. It will go wrong, there’s no way around it—”

“I don’t care! I DON’T CARE!” Bart screams even as it stops in a sob. “I just want him back!”

He rushes Barry, leaving Len alone, and grips clawed fingers in his double’s shirt like a parody of reflections.

“How can you be so cruel and heartless? I want nothing in the world, no one in the world but him. The _right_ him. _My_ Leo. I WANT ONLY HIM!”

“Are you sure about that?” Barry says softly because he is not trying to be flip or triumphant but kind again—for Len’s sake.

Bart turns, still enraged and indignant at Barry’s diverted attention, but when he sees Len like he’d forgotten he was there, his hands clench open and shut like a jerky unconscious reaction.

“Leo,” he breathes out, but Len can hear how disingenuous it sounds. At least in his moments of madness, it sounds honest.

“Don’t,” Len says, calm and cool and quiet. His gut reaction is to touch the bruises on his neck, but he refrains. “You know exactly who I am. A poor imitation, right? I didn’t tell you about this before because I knew you’d stop at nothing to change your own past, and I know as well as _he_ does how much that doesn’t work out the way you want. You wanna set yourself up for heartache, that it?”

“There must be a way,” Bart shakes his head, hands dropping from Barry finally to hang at his sides.

“Not from this world, there isn’t. You’d have to be home.”

“Snart…” Barry says like a warning, but what choice does Len have now when the bargaining chips have changed and he no longer matters when Bart could have the real thing.

“Continue to help us,” he says, ignoring Barry’s stare. “Send your people home. Go _home_ , Bart. And he’ll tell you how to change time.”

“ _Snart_.” Barry pushes from the wall to get between them. “Changing his past would affect ours. We're connected now—”

“Promise him,” Len snaps, and hopes he conveys to Barry with a look that he knows what he’s doing.

After all, he’s a liar and a scoundrel. Bart doesn’t have to know that they’ll toss him and his fellows through the portal to their world and slam the door shut behind them without keeping their word. Oh, Bart will rage, but Len will be free, won’t he? Because whatever twisted fantasy he had about going back with Bart or even keeping him here…can’t happen now.

There is no Bart without the madness. Not without Leo.

Barry’s eyes betray his shock that only Len can see, maybe judgment, _definitely_ judgment before he shakes his head and turns. “I promise. But one more outburst, a single step out of place, and I swear—”

“I shall be a dog at your heels,” Bart bows his head, calm again but edgy, “as long as I get my reward.”

“Open the door, Cisco.”

“Dude, are you sure?” Cisco’s voice echoes from the walls.

“Yeah. It’ll be fine.”

Barry pushes out first when the door opens and Len makes to do the same, but Bart stops him with a hand at his arm, firm but not harsh, eyes trying to convey the sweetness that Len only fell for when Bart pretended to be Barry.

“Len…” he dares address him in the one surefire way to keep him chained—but not this time. _Not this time._

“Don’t.” Len shakes him off.

“My temper is surely a weakness,” Bart clings regardless, caught between the cell and freedom, straddling the threshold, “but you must understand. I see now you only wished to protect me.”

Len had been protecting himself too. Giving Bart knowledge of a way to bring his husband back would have made Len’s own usefulness moot that much sooner in the beginning. And maybe Len liked being the only one Bart looked at like he was _his_.

“You will always be dear to me,” Bart says. It almost sounds apologetic.

 _Dear_ —not beloved, never really.

“Another few moments with that temper and I would have been _dead_ to you. Is this how you always were, Bart? I don’t think you were. I think grief made you the mad boy-king, boy- _god_ , but it wasn’t who you were.” Len knows he’s being cruel when he leans close and whispers, “Would your Leo even know you now?”

Bart's eyes are as clear as Len has ever seen them when he pulls away.

They stay that way for hours—his eyes, his stare. During the slow trek back to the others, following Barry. While the plan is made to use Len and Bart as bait, but safely, to Team Flash’s specifications. When in the lull between planning and execution, Bart reaches for _Wally_ as a friendly face, a comrade, but the boy flinches after one too many times seeing Bart untamed and terrifying.

“S-Sorry, man. I gotta…help Cisco with something.”

Bart turns to Len, like always, the lost little boy showing through, but Len doesn’t feel the usual surge of pity or longing. He has to be cold, because it’s all he ever is in the end.

“What's the matter, Hail? Story not playing out the way you wanted?”

Bart pouts, but the petulance is false. It’s the clarity that has yet to leave his eyes that makes Len uneasy and feel some of the guilt Barry showed before.

They all have strings. Even Bart. Just not tied to Len.

 

\-----

 

He’s always been fond enough of Keystone, as far as places that aren’t Central City go. It has its own attitude, its own atmosphere, and an underbelly that is familiar after all these years. Mick always felt more comfortable in Keystone than Len did, a place where he usually had more contacts than he ever bothered to make a fuss about. Len's run jobs here on his own, without Mick, but walking the streets with someone who most definitely isn’t his partner twists something uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach.

He looks over to his current companion, who is exuding all of the discomfort that Len feels and more. Maybe he should be tired of seeing the boy decked out in tight pants and eye-catching shirts, but Len so rarely does what he should. The first moment he saw the getup, he was effectively taken in by the ruse – which was the kind of verisimilitude they were aiming for. It was also disturbing.

_Barry struggled into the leather pants, studded over the hips, wriggling and hopping much to the amusement of all his friends and Bart’s loud annoyance._

_“What an unnecessary farce,” Bart practically moaned, “I am perfectly capable - you cannot truly believe you can dress up this child in some garments resembling my taste and pass him off as me.”_

_“You can pass as each other just fine,” Len said pointedly, not bothering to hold back a glare, “but I do think three speedsters are better than two.”_

_“Not if one of them is a psychotic liar who’ll betray us at the drop of a hat,” Barry spat out._

_Len smiled rather ferociously toward Bart. “See? He can pass as you just fine.”_

“Stop fidgeting,” he murmurs to Barry, though he doubts they’ve picked up any tails yet.

“These pants are ridiculous,” Barry whispers back, “he couldn’t just be a psycho-murderer, he has to be goth too?”

“Goth is about as best as we can do with the fashion of this world, unless you want to waste time tailoring a wardrobe for him.”

“No thanks.”

“Besides there’s no need to front like that, I saw the nostalgia in Miss West’s eyes and how easily you took to the eyeliner. Had a little bit of a phase, didn’t you, Barry?”

“I won’t be held responsible for things I did as a child,” Barry huffs back, but Len sees he’s clearly succeeded in making the other man relax, walking with less tension along the darkening streets. Len snorts a bit, thinking back to his first arrests when he really was just a child.

“Should give that lip to the justice department some time,” he says, despite himself, “they don’t have any qualms about doing just that.”

Barry loses any façade he might have built up by looking all troubled and concerned almost instantaneously, “Snart, I—”

“Speaking of _kids_ ,” he interrupts, before Barry can start flagellating himself on his own guilt, “how is it looking from up there?”

“I’ve got eyes on you two and I don’t see anyone approaching from the North side,” Wally’s voice crackles through the comms.

“Exactly the kind of good news we don’t need right now.”

“At least you got warm coats. Even in my suit, it’s _freezing_ up here.”

Len stops, recognizing where they’ve ended up in their winding path of Lisa’s mirrored territories from the other world, because they’re right in the heart of it if Len remembers the maps he saw in Bart’s stronghold—and he never remembers wrong.

 “ _Kid_ ,” Len barks, “get off the roof. Now.”

“What? Why shou—”

Barry whips around, but Wally’s voice has already cut out and Len can hear the rush of wind as the boy falls from wherever he’d been perched. Hopefully, he was only one story up.

“Wally!” Barry cries, even as Len grabs him and hauls him into the nearest alley _away_ from the building Lisa must have claimed given how easily they’ve been made.

Must be Frost, which means Bart’s Mick, Hartley, and Lisa could be anywhere.

“I told you we needed a third speedster.”

“Wally, are you okay?” Barry ignores him.

“…urg, fine. Coming to you.”

A whoosh of air rustles Len’s jacket, and Wally is with them, looking no worse for wear.

For now.

“As soon as they show themselves—” Len says, but again, they’re too slow, _all of them_ , even with two of the fastest men alive.

“I was beginning to get bored,” a haunting voice rings out that could be a rush of wind or _Lorna_ , and Len shivers before he turns down the alley toward the street they came from.

Lisa is stunning like he never could have envisioned. He almost thinks she _is_ his mother because of the way she glows. Her hair is spun gold, but he knows that smile and the sparkle in his sister’s eyes.

Like some gossamer fairy, she fills the alley with tulle and lace to make up her golden gown, with glittery makeup and expensive looking lips. Len hadn’t really looked when he saw the footage of these creatures come through the portal, but now Lisa is in front of him and she is a _queen_ if ever he saw one.  

He is frozen, the only explanation for how he hears Mick and Hartley before he sees them, moving in to cut off their escape down the other side of the alley. Then Len feels the chill that assaulted Wally, and he looks up to see Frost clinging to the wall of the building above them like her hands are adhesive, though it’s the way she freezes the air to make hand and footholds wherever she treads.

They’re surrounded.

“Oh Leo…” Lisa continues, but not the way Bart says it, because she knows it isn’t Len’s name, “when I look at you, I could almost forget I buried my brother…because of the _powder keg_ he brought home.”

Len pushes Barry and Wally behind him because the worst threat is in front, which she makes clear by trailing her fingers along the wall, glittering and painted gold, but it isn’t her polish that leaves a spreading sickness as though she were dragging a paintbrush behind her.

“Way Bart tells it, you were welcoming and all on board, sang nothing but praises at the wedding even, until your own turned sour.” Len’s hand is on his gun, but he doesn’t draw it.

“You’re everything the others said you were,” Lisa smiles, and there’s a sense of roleplay beyond the outfit, like she’s trying to seem mad when she clearly isn’t, “Mick spoke of you as though I would hardly see a difference, other than a sharper tongue. Is that the way _you_ like it, speedster?” Her eyes draw back to Barry in his gothic getup. “I know you’re not my brother-in-law, though you look lovely playing the part.”

“We don’t have to fight.”

_Damn it, Barry._

“We just want you to go home,” he pushes past Len like the martyr he is, though Len takes the moment to be prudent and draw his weapon behind Barry's back. “Take Bart with you. And leave our world alone.”

“Gladly. With Leo as well.”

“He’s not going.”

“Ah,” she says like she’s discovered all she needed, stopping only a few feet from them, her trail of gold ceasing as her fingers drop, “so you are like Hail. My brother is precious to you.”

“He’s _not_ your brother. He’s…my responsibility,” Barry fumbles.

_How romantic._

“Poor Leo,” Lisa says, reading the flicker of a grimace on Len’s face, “you wish he’d speak sweeter words. The way Hail does. We could have peace, you know, with you among us. You could temper the lightning, so long as you convince him that the crown is _mine_. I’d only want to see you from time to time, is that so difficult a request? He can keep you,” she glides closer as though she is floating, “it’s what you want too, isn’t it? To be kept and cared for. But if you fight me,” she looks at Barry within reaching distance now, at Len too close as well, “…you’d make a lovely statue in my garden.”

“Don’t let her touch you,” Bart’s voice rings in Len’s ears. He hears shuffling next, Cisco muttering, and finally, silence.

Len knew that much. He paid attention to the briefing Bart gave of their powers and what he already knew for himself.

Mick— _Pyre_ —produces fire from his hands.

Hartley— _Echo_ —has sonic abilities that pulse from his fingertips instead of his vocal chords like other metas Len’s heard about.

Caitlin— _Frost_ —isn’t quite like the _Killer_ version Len was told of from Earth-2, but she can freeze the moisture in the air, which is just as deadly when played right.

And Lisa— _Gold_ —her touch is like her namesake that not only glistens over inorganic surfaces but is a terrible, painful death to anything living.

Rosa Dillon only lasted so long against her, keeping Lisa under her thumb, because her powers robbed other metas of their abilities if they were caught in her stare.

Len has to think of them as their monikers or he’ll never get through this.

“I’d prefer to stay,” he says, revving up his gun Gold’s direction—on _blast_ , because he could never shoot his baby sister, no matter how deadly, “but if you want to rid this world of _our_ Rosa on your way out, wouldn’t be any skin off my nose.”

“I don’t know this one,” Gold looks past him at Wally as if he hadn’t just mentioned her dead ex.

“Another powder keg,” Pyre growls, even though in other terms, that’s something he’d enjoy.

“Hardly a speedster worth his salt,” Frost titters down at them.

Len sees the way Echo flinches in her company, wary of her, but more confident with Pyre at his side and Bart nowhere in sight. None of them seem as fearful of Barry as they would be of _Hail_. His eyes don’t carry the same hunger.

“Where is he?” Echo asks, edgy like Len remembers. He wants this over with which makes him dangerous.

“You can have him, but not Snart,” Barry says. “Take Hail and go. We’ll open the way for you. Just _leave_. The people of our world have nothing to offer you. They don’t understand. They—”

“Perhaps they should. Perhaps we like it here and wish to stay longer.” Frost slides down the wall with the grace of a dancer, dropping to her feet in front of Gold without a sound. The face is Caitlin’s, but the hair is short blue, eyes glowing ethereally similar. “What do you have to offer if you think you can send us away? You would have slaughtered us by now if you could. Maybe you’re a dud too.”

“Hey,” Wally speaks up— _great_ , “I’m no dud.”

“And what do they call you, baby boy?”

“Kid…Flash,” even he can’t say it without faltering.

“Adorable,” Frost looks back at Lisa with shared mirth. “They’ve sent the second string. We should _play_ if they won’t take us seriously.”

“Is that what you want…Flash?” Lisa’s laugh rings like a bell when Barry straightens. “Your name isn’t hard to figure out, sweetie. Are we making a deal or starting a war?”

“Please…”

“Sounds like a dud to me,” Pyre says, hands heating up like coals in a bonfire.

The air around Echo ripples. Len feels the chill from Frost. And Gold glows brighter as she prepares to launch forward.

“Up the wall!” Len cries in the same moment he fires his gun at the deadly women, knowing for Frost it’ll barely sting, and hopes one or both speedsters understands what he meant.

The next moment, he’s on the roof, so at least they aren’t completely useless.

“Call in Bart.”

“We can do this,” Barry insists, the eyeliner making him impossible to take seriously. “I’m not letting that animal leave four new corpses.”

“So the three about to be made of _us_ will show him, that it?”

“ _Hey_ ,” Wally waves his arms for their attention just before something—a manhole cover?—flies at him like a frozen Frisbee and he gets thrown right off the roof. Again.

Barry zips after him and Len finds himself alone. Glancing over the ledge of the roof, he sees no one in the alley but knows they’re still surrounded. Faint noise like a propeller is the only warning he gets before Echo lands on the roof to join him, hooded in black and wild with purpose to be free of Hail and this world. Len fires his gun the same moment Echo blasts a ripple of soundwaves at him like summer heatwaves, and somehow the distortion in the air causes the blast of cold to pause and hover and then dissipate in a burst of snowfall.

“Huh. Neat trick.”

“I don’t care what happens to you. I just want freedom.”

“Methinks you want Mick alive and well too.”

Echo smirks, “He can take care of himself,” and blasts Len back, toppling him off the edge of the roof where he will _not_ recover as fast as Wally.

But strong arms catch him that Len is almost grateful for before he feels the heat radiating off them and remembers this isn’t his Mick. He starts to struggle but is set down gently, a gruff expression on Pyre maybe, but no real malice in the familiar eyes—not for Len.

“You can control ‘im,” he says, “you can fix this.”

 _We’re all mad here_ , used to play in Len’s mind as easily as that old song about strings, living in a gilded cage for Bart, but it’s not the same kind of madness for all of them, and Len hear the pleading in Mick’s words.

“It’s not like that, Mick. He wants the real Leo, not me.”

“Yeah? Him and me both,” the man snarls, and Len has half a second to fire his gun at the midsection of the pyro before burning hands reach for his face.

They’re still like children, foolhardy and forgetful of how to play nice when they want something specific. If the end goal is Len and Bart together to fix the broken boy, this isn’t the road to get it, but as Len bolts down the alley in search of a speedster, any speedster, ready to risk calling over the comms and giving away his position, he runs into the trump card that still brings him up short.

Lisa is hauntingly beautiful.

“Maybe this one won’t go mad. Is that what you hope too?”

If she touches him, he’s dead.

“We need you, don’t you understand?” she outstretches her arms, her hands, already too close for Len to counter, and his breath catches when she grasps his face. He’s dead— _dead_. “He’ll never stop without some version of you to calm him. Maybe my brother never should have brought him home, but they were so happy,” her soft fingers stroke his face and he waits for the pain that for some reason never comes, “ _we_ were so happy…before I led it all to ruin…”

Len’s attention snaps up to meet her eyes, his _sister’s_ eyes, and there isn’t madness here either, not the way it exists in Bart, just…grief.

“Snart!”

Barry’s there and suddenly so is the whirlwind, ending with Len pressed against a new wall, down a new alley, with Barry crowded in close like he’s out of breath and unsure what to do other than lean into Len’s space. The proximity stings in his chest before he tears his eyes from Barry’s lovely, parted lips to see a new spectacle only a few yards away.

Wally has Frost, but he’s having trouble pinning her down or knocking her out with how cold the air around him has become, and before he can act—

“Kid!”

She lunges forward to steal a kiss.

Bare fingers grow ice-tipped claws that drive deep into the sides of his suit, but Wally can’t cry out for how he’s trapped by her life-stealing lips.

“Wally!”

Len curses, suddenly glad there aren’t any speedsters at play on the other side because just as quickly, both Barry and Frost are gone.

“Goddamn it!” Len shouts as he rushes to the kid’s side and starts to put pressure on the wounds. “I can’t drag both your asses back to Central,” he growls, and feels some validation in his nemesis having returned already to hear those words with another whoosh of air.

“I—” Barry looks like he’s about to argue, paralyzed between the threat still around them and the image of his brother bleeding out of his bright yellow suit with trembling, _blue_ lips.

Len glares not indignant or taunting the way he usually is with The Flash and his team, but hard and authoritative the way he is with his own.

“ _Deal_ with this,” he orders, cold and hollow.

Barry’s torn expression shifts to determined, and he flashes away to neutralize the remaining, unseen threats, not any less remarkable just because he isn’t wearing scarlet.

“Cisco,” Len says into the comms, “Wally is down, Barry is coming in with him—”

“Snart—”

“ _Shut up_ and get ready to deal with his injuries or I’ll be happy to share the blame for getting West’s kid killed. You’re dealing with an abdominal injury that looks worse than it is. The real problem is Frost got in there and lowered his core temperature so you’ve probably got massive necrosis trying to creep up in his major organs.”

As he finishes, Barry skids into view again and picks up Wally’s prone body as carefully as he can. He makes to wrap an arm around Len, but Len lifts his cold gun pointblank at Barry’s face.

“You’re losing seconds already,” he snaps. “You don’t need the extra weight, now get him out of here.”

“I’ll come right back,” Barry nods, not thinking twice before disappearing in a lightning strike.

Len moves to see what he’s left to deal with, peering cautiously around the bend of the current alley. Thankfully, Barry has managed to reign in his disdain for violence and taken down Pyre and Echo, possibly by knocking their heads together—though they won’t be out long.

Frost, on the other hand, got a considerably more vicious take down if the way she’s practically hog tied is anything to go by.

Len shudders, being reminded so clearly that a very thin line made of things completely immaterial separates Barry from Bart. Or perhaps it’s the chill of dread realizing the not so demented _Gold_ is nowhere to be seen.

They could almost end this right now if Barry hadn’t been forced to bring Wally back, but the white hats will want to regroup, and before they’re ready, they’ll face this same army again.

Straightening out his jacket, Len fights against the urge to curl into it and make himself small. He’s not going to be prey, not in his world. With that thought, he turns on his heel and starts his way back in the general direction of Central.  

 

\-----

 

Barry apparently does come back for him, because he’s cautiously making his way between cities and thinking of laying low for the night if he has to when he’s suddenly nauseous and then standing in the middle of STAR Labs trying not to throw up bile from his empty stomach.

Barry spares him a glance and a nod, his face a mask of anguish, before he goes to stand a safe distance from where Snow is directing _Mick_ of all people to hold Wally down while she works. The boy is awake, barely, and using what little force he seems to have to writhe and scream.

West is here now—of course he is, just in time to see his son die—and pulls Barry into his arms where Iris is already huddled, eyes intent on her brother.

“Psycho killer wants to help!” Cisco shouts as he enters, Bart and Lisa trailing behind him.

“Wally doesn’t have time for your _ego_ ,” Snow takes the time to say, glaring up from the boy’s shaking body with what Len thinks is a brief flash of _blue_ in her eyes.

Bart walks slowly, in a way Len has seen to be predatory before, though his hands are raised to placate and his face is…soft. All the sharpened angles dulled and his eyes clear.

“Please,” he says and it almost sounds real, “I’ve been close to death more times than I can count without any of your refined equipment or technical knowledge getting in the way. He’ll die if you work against what his body can do for itself.”

Snow ignores him, already back to work. Len watches West closely and sees the consideration in the man’s shoulders.

“Caitlin,” he says with a shaking voice, “is there anything you can do for him? Tell me honestly.”

“I don’t know,” she says, hands decisive but idle, trying to ease Wally’s pain but having no idea how to, “whatever she did is working faster than he can handle without his speed. It’s stronger than I can manage with what I have available.”

“Then let him help,” West says, letting go of Barry and Iris to step toward Bart.

He hasn’t been here, he doesn’t _know_ , he only sees his son’s face.

“You know what it is,” West says with fervor that Len never heard before he met Bart and his world of broken hearts, “loss like that, you _know_ what it is.”

“I would wish it on my worst enemy,” Bart says earnestly, “but she has already suffered that. I’ve been injured by Frost before, in a similar way. It is not easy and it is not gentle. He will hurt almost unbearably, but if you let me handle this, he will live.”

“Let him do it,” West calls out, “let him save my boy.”

Snow steps back from Wally’s body which quakes less and less each moment. Mick makes to move back as well but Bart shakes his head.

“I’m going to hurt him worse than he hurts now,” he declares, “you’ll have to hold him down with less tenderness.”

It is a testament to the tension in the room perhaps, or to the lives Mick has lived in his absence and because of it, that Mick does not question or protest the accusation of tenderness. Instead he steadies himself behind the boy’s head to hold down his shoulders with visible force.

“Why hurt him?” Barry asks, weary but hopeful.

“Because our power comes from our core,” he says as he touches his own chest and then without preamble, jolts a bolt of lightning right at Wally’s heart making the boy quiet and still, “that is why Frost attacked it. What power still runs through him is trying to warm and heal his deepest organs and it cannot, it is not enough.”

He takes Wally’s hand and, with a soft and gentle caress to the boy’s cheek, snaps it cleanly at the wrist. The group gasps, Barry stepping forward only to be stopped by Iris’ hand on his arm. Her eyes are intent on Bart and his macabre process as he moves to Wally’s fingers and then his other arm and then, somewhere around the third finger of his left, the boy snaps awake—screaming in agony.

“Distributed pain on a lesser scale,” Bart continues, calm and firm over the screams, “creates eruptions of power and heat, which will strengthen it enough to work the deeper wounds.”

“His vitals are recovering,” Snow confirms from her station right beside Mick, “core temperature returning to normal.”

West’s sigh of relief echoes around the room and suddenly Lisa is there at Len’s side, hugging him in a way she hasn’t publicly done in years. There’s too much in the room – too much fear and too much anger. Too much _love_ , Len admits to himself, that doesn’t quite know where to go.

“I thought it might be you,” Lisa says quietly, “for a second there, we had no idea which of you was hurt.”

“I’m fine,” he says, wrapping one arm around her here in this place where their masks and personas keep popping up and falling away.

“He was scared too,” she whispers in his ear, “heart in his throat, honestly scared.”

Len watches Bart. He can picture it just as well, the expression of terror that everything might not go his way. That he’ll lose Len and with him the chance to get Leo back again.

“He’s always scared,” Len says, kissing the top of her head, not actually caring that Bart has moved closer to them while the others huddle around Wally, “it means nothing if you live that way.”

 

TBC...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are love!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bart's off kilter in more ways than one, but it's soon time to face the music.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all again for staying with this story! The plan is to get the next and (more than likely) final chapter up soon after this, so stay tuned! 
> 
> It continues to be an amazing ride writing this jointly, and we hope you're all enjoying!

“As much as I _loathe_ getting to say, ‘I told you so’,” Len smirks without an ounce of loathing in being able to say that to Barry’s face, “I’m lying, I love it, and I _did_.”

“I get it,” Barry says through gritted teeth, “you were right. We need Bart.”

Len expects Bart to preen at those words, but he remains frighteningly calm and quiet now that Wally’s bones have been reset and the boy is sleeping peacefully in the med room.

They need a new plan. They need to be a unified front. They need Wally to heal so they have three speedsters tomorrow when they try again. They also can’t risk leaving the safety of STAR Labs until then, none of them this time, so the various rooms are outfitted with cots and blankets to give each person privacy, West planning to stay in the extra med bed to be close to his son. Barry and Iris will no doubt share a space, but Len has no intention of letting Bart anywhere near him.

For now, there are hours left in the day to prepare for their assault and stew in anxiousness to see this through.

“You don’t even know us, huh?” West asks Bart when he thinks he has him alone, but Len lingers within hearing distance.

“Not until I came to this world,” he says, sounding cautious. He’s off kilter, Len can see that, probably unused to the mix of deep warmth and concern in the other man’s voice.

“But your parents…”

“Gone.”

“How did you live?”

Len knows this story, but he’s never heard Bart tell it with so little poetry and flair before.

“Orphanage. For others like me. The other children hated me, so once I had come into my powers, I ran. It was easy with my speed to get by, just…lonely. Then Leo found me,” he lit up like he always did when speaking of his husband. “Sent Mick for me. Made me family. Made me _his_. I never wanted for anything after that.”

West doesn’t voice his distaste for Bart’s dependency on _Leo_ Snart, but it shimmers across his face. “Seems you’re still looking for family, kiddo. Well, if you need one, you’ve always got one here.”

“I do not believe _Flash_ agrees with you,” Bart says, bordering on his more common sneer.

“Barry has trouble with the mirror some days. We all do.” Maybe West will never know Bart unhinged. He hasn’t slipped in hours after all and there’s longing in his eyes when West hesitates but finally reaches up to grip his shoulder like he would either of his sons.

The role reversal brings its own sting for Len, shadowing Bart like the mad boy once shadowed him. Except Bart seems to barely notice or chooses to ignore him as he seeks out the others like a curious child hoping to please. The _act_ Len would recognize; this feels genuine.

He doesn’t bother with Barry but looks for Iris, who Barry has attached himself to like a jealous lover. Which he _is_ , especially with Bart hanging about.

“Beautiful Iris, you would be marvelous in lightning. Like Wally before you. An unstoppable _trio_ ,” Bart says, acknowledging Barry only because he cannot escape him and understands that Iris is his.

“I don’t think meta powers are in the cards for me,” she says.

“Have you tested that theory?”

They haven’t, Len can tell, because Iris looks the sort of eager she gets when hot on the trail of a story. Wouldn’t that be something—if Barry had someone to _really_ keep up with him?

It’s like Ebenezer and his ghosts the way Bart makes the rounds to right his wrongs after finally being forced to see them.

He finds Snow too, who’s cold by nature but warm with those she loves, and she loves Barry enough to have hope in Bart when he’s so clearly _trying_.

“You had a husband? I did not know,” he says with what sounds like authentic sympathy. It makes sense, of course. After all, Bart is exactly what happens when someone on that Earth loses their spouse. In any world, he imagines, that sort of thing must hurt – but in Bart’s home it might well be the worst kind of pain. 

“I’m not exactly the same as _Frost_ ,” she tells him.

“But of course not, you are clearly stronger. A healer. Master of your powers.”

“I don’t have powers, Bart.”

“Don’t you?”

They might merely be lovely words to remind the doctor she’s special enough as just human, but Len wonders if it’s deeper insight given some of the clues he’s seen lately.

Next is Cisco, who won’t trust Bart, not after he killed someone with Cisco's face as easily as stretching his limbs. Bart can’t, _won’t_ apologize for it, but he hovers, playing nice, making lighter comments and jokes to relax Cisco without any ulterior motives Len can see other than _Cisco's_ benefit.

It delights Bart when Cisco finally laughs without guardedness, but it’s short lived.

“Step off now, Nega-Barry. Go play somewhere else, you’re making me nervous.”

That’s when Bart surprises Len by going to Lisa.

He approaches her slowly, maybe out of deference to how dangerous Bart’s Lisa is or to how aware he is that Len is following him. She’s sitting on a lab table, filing her nails and flipping through a large stack of papers pretending not to read it at all. Len knows she’s likely taking mental notes as she goes.

“Well, come on up,” she says raising her eyebrows but not her eyes.

Bart takes a seat beside her, raising his own eyebrows when she puts down her nail file and motions at him.

“Give me your hands,” she says imperiously.

Bart does and Lisa inspects them as Len has seen her do before.

“God, not a single scar. Rich boy hands.”

“I don’t scar.”

“I know,” she sighs. “Street rat with a rich boy’s hands, you’d make a killing in the casinos.”

“I prefer banks.”

“Banks are boring,” she hums, “you can hit them after hours. No one to flirt with there.”

She digs through her little make up pouch and Bart’s eyes follow her hands as she pulls out a tiny glass bottle.

“What’s that?”

“Berry Naughty.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The color. Berry Naughty. Two coats and it’s all but black, I think it’ll suit you.”

There’s a moment of silent challenge and then Bart gives a nod of acceptance and Lisa gets to work.

They sit like that and Len feels comfortable leaving them to their silence and their nails, to Lisa’s intuition and Bart’s memory of his family.

After some time, their communion must finish. Bart returns to Wally’s bedside, nails both bright and dark. He sits quietly with West, so Len decides to leave him be once more.

It’s between updates from others about possible plans of attack—and backup in case those plans go awry—that Mick finds Len. He wanders over, looking stormy, as if he was tired of being left out and ready to come to blows over it. Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe they're past blows now, but Mick’s eyes always look ready for a fight.

“You need to throw a punch, now’s as good a time as any,” Len says, but Mick shrugs.

“Not in the mood.”

For years they could sit in companionable silence without trouble, but now there’s a wall built by things left unsaid since Len _died_ for Mick, built by time and grief and _Bart_ that Len doesn’t know how to break down.

He hates feeling speechless, but not even jabs and jokes have a place between them anymore. The best option, he knows, is to walk away. To mark Mick a part – a long deeply entrenched part – of his past. But he can’t stop looking at him, noting the new knocks and scars on his battered face, the rough edges worn by things Len wasn’t there to live, and something else. Something contemplative and…calm. Relief.

“Miss me, Mick?”

“That’s a goddamn stupid question,” he answers without missing a beat. It startles Len. It isn’t Mick’s customary bravado and it isn’t Mick’s raging anger. It’s fierce and frightening yes but it’s just Mick’s…honesty. The kind Len hasn’t seen since they were much too earnest kids.

“I can’t – I’m staying in Central,” he declares, “this Central.”

“Figured.”

“And you’ve got a crew that needs you,” he continues.

“And I’ll be here when the boss calls,” Mick agrees. It takes Len a moment and then of course it stabs him like a hot poker in the gut. The boss, of course, isn’t him anymore. Because he wasn’t there to stand by Mick, to protect him. Sacrificing himself for Mick was never part of the deal – you can’t be there for your partner if you’re dead. So, Mick moved on. Fine.

“Better places to spend your vacation days than Central, Mick. You could finally get around to Aruba,” he mentions, casual as he can.

“Goddamn Aruba,” Mick mutters under his breath before speaking up, “Are you going to stop being a dick? Cause if ya ain’t, I need a beer.”

“What – you don’t want me to apologize for _dying_ , do you?”

“Course not, you piece of—”

“Then what do you want?”

“Two years I been people savin’, puttin’ fires out instead of settin’ them, making sure no more of those freakin’ idiots gets killed. After I got done tryin’ to die with you, I got to making sure you died for somethin’. Then I finally find ya shacking up with that Lost Boys reject and you can’t even look at me – just everyone else. Like every pig and every hero, like everyone but you and me. What the fuck do I want? I want my partner back.”

Len stares, his throat tight, eyes burning, and he finds himself too tired. Too tired and actually too damn old to care that he can barely squeeze the words out of his throat, “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Mick says. Simple. Like his promises.

“Okay,” Len answers, his voice barely there.

“Good. Alright. You want a beer?”

Maybe it’s the words finally spoken or the alcohol, maybe both or nothing at all, but some of that companionable silence finds them, drinking in the breakroom of STAR Labs.

Snow breezes through at one point to make something to eat, eyeing them disapprovingly until Mick hands her a bottle. She pauses before thinking better of her censure and accepts it.

“We had beer in that fridge?”

“Not bad either.”

She tips hers back since Mick already popped the top. No disapproval now, and the swig she follows up the first with rivals any of Len’s.

“Fun watchin’ you work, doc,” Mick says, and Len eyes the pair to be sure he hasn’t missed something else new, but no, there’s no rapport here – yet.

“Not fun watching my team get hurt.”

“I hear ya. That’s why we need _you_.”

_We?_

Snow hides a quiet smile but there’s an edge to it like an interrupted roar. Hell hath no fury – somewhere in there.

“Storm’s brewin’ in those icy veins,” Mick says after she’s left with her plate and beer in hand to check on Wally.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“Looks good on her.”

Mick’s playing with fire again, in the middle of a snowstorm. “Might look better if those eyes burn blue, but we could end up sorrier for it.”

“Nah,” Mick tips his beer all the way back until it empties, “she ain’t her twin. I ain’t either.”

Len looks at Mick, at the empty beer he’s holding without immediately contemplating another. “No. You’re not. But some familiar moments creep in from time to time. He wants his partner back too.”

“Too bad for him then,” Mick reaches now for the remaining beers and Len nods, “the dead don’t come back, only the living.”

They clink bottles and Len thinks, _I hope so_.

 

\-----

 

It’s late when Len wanders into his designated closet with an air mattress and pile of blankets. He’s thankful STAR Labs has showers coz he needed one and feels ready to sleep for a lifetime or two, but he can’t rest yet, not really, not until the shadows that followed him from one life to the next go home where they belong.

A rap on his door alerts him to a familiar presence, but if the knock wasn’t a giveaway, the _red_ is. Cisco does like his color-coding.

“Something I can help you with, Barry?”

Barry lingers in the doorway like it would be too much of an invasion to step closer. “It’s just...tomorrow. If Wally isn’t well enough and the breachers attack…” Concern for his city and its people play as potently across his features as any for his loved ones. Ever the hero.

“Sorry to say, Scarlet, but our friends from another world aren’t known for patience. They’ll attack if we don’t hit Keystone first. Maybe earlier than we’ll be ready.”

“I know. I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”

“Apologizing _again_? You must be nervous. Getting lonely on that high horse?”

“You don’t have to be a dick about it,” Barry says with his accustomed eye-roll, “this is tough for me. Tougher than usual, and I’ve lived plenty of horror stories. Now it’s familiar faces trying to kill everyone I love, which was bad enough the _first time_ and…” And the familiar face in front of him still haunts him for how it was recently dead.

Len doesn’t have chairs, just the low bed on the floor and a pile of his things in the corner. The cold gun he’d brought with him, even to the bathroom, wondering foolishly maybe if Cisco might try to steal it back, so it’s strapped to his leg. The point is though there’s nowhere to relax without it being _on_ the bed and that can’t, won’t, would never happen.

Part of Len wishes it could.

He walks forward and Barry enters fully to meet him like opposing magnets, the door swaying shut behind him. This is strange too, intimate in ways their time alone in larger rooms throughout the Labs never is. It’s a 20x20 cell larger than the Pipeline lockups, but it may as well be 5x5.

“We’ve made backup plans for our backup plans,” Len says, “and we know better how to counter their abilities _because_ of your screw-up. No one’s dead and we’re more prepared. Doesn’t mean this train’s staying on the rails tomorrow, but what’s your track record for losing to the baddie of the week again?”

Barry smiles and it’s real – _new_ somehow. “I can think of a few times _you_ let me walk away.”

“Out of the goodness of my black little heart.”

“But they’re not you. No one is…you.”

There’s potency in his expression again, but potent with what, Len can’t name. He thought Barry looked at him like this once, but that was years ago, before he died, before Barry moved on with a good riddance and finally won over Miss West.

“Something else I can help you with, Barry?”

The visual of Barry swallowing back his nerves draws Len’s attention to his slender throat, while Barry’s eyes stray to Len’s mouth. “He’s so sure of what he wants.”

A familiar tune begins to play in Len’s head. “Yeah. His husband.”

“I know, I know he’s not you and I’m not him, it’s a mess, but I wonder. I _wonder_ , is all.”

_I'm not tied up to anyone…_

No, NO – _No_.

“And hate yourself for wondering coz you’re the loyal type.”

Barry touches his hand like there should be a ring there but isn’t. “Who I love should ground me, but it doesn’t always. More often it’s the reason I lose my feet.”

“What do you want, Barry?”

The cringe that touches his brow aches in Len like few things can, “I don’t know,” he says, “I don’t know anymore...” but the advance forward, the invasion of Len’s space, the slow descent of _lips_ he should deny, fight, rage against…feels as good as the first time he thought he was gifted this.

 _Barry_ – kissing him like a fever dream.

Len's hands seek the line where jeans and T-shirt meet, and it should be to _push_ , but he can’t, _he can’t_. He doesn’t mean to pursue the skin between, but he does so anyway, seeking harbor from the cold in Barry’s warmth.

He wishes it surprised him to find scar tissue, and he should have noticed the painted nails, he _should have_ , because he knew, deep down, that the dream could never be real. It _hurts_ but doesn’t stop him from enduring the kiss for just a little longer.

“Len—” Bart grasps his wrists.

“Get out,” he snaps back sharp as a whip crack. “This isn’t how you make amends.”

“ _Please_ ,” the boy follows him like they’re tethered tight, “I didn’t mean to be cruel. I only thought to give you a nice goodbye to quell your longing in my absence.”

“A stolen kiss for him to blush over and back away from and return to Miss West?” Len sneers. “Longing doesn’t work that way, Bart. You _know_ that.”

He pouts, and it should look selfish, but Len thinks he means the apology this time, and somehow that’s _worse_. “You were happier with him.”

“I was never _with_ him.” Why can’t it sink in that a world exists where Ice and Lightning weren’t one? “What do you want? What do _you_ want? Coz I’m not some fallback if you can’t have Leo. Get that through your head.” His breath catches on the words, and it’s him and Mick all over again, too much emotion he refuses to be ruled by, yet here he is. Pathetic. Lacking. “Is it so wrong to want a version of you that wants THIS version of me?”

Because that’s the rub, the ruse, the mockery. He shouldn’t want this like the best thing he'll never have and never ever steal.

“It’s so much,” Bart says, too simple to cover the breadth of it all. “So much… I forgot how happy I was with more than Leo alone.”

“Almost having one of your friends kill Kid Flash has you nostalgic?”

“Not for _her_ ,” Bart snarls. “But Lisa. Mick. Hartley, even. If only I could have it all again. _All_ again…”

“Yeah. If only.” Len steps back, then back once more, almost hitting the mattress. Bart doesn’t follow, but he doesn’t leave either. “She said she led you to ruin.”

“She did?” Bart’s eyes find the clarity that had faltered. “She _did_. Chose Rosa, only to learn too late she’d wed a copy of her father and brought about the first war. Leo would have done anything for her then.”

“And for you.”

“Except leave her to her fate.”

“Is that what you wanted?”

It’s the longest they’ve ever spoken without deception.

“No,” Bart says, maybe even remorseful of the times he spoke casually of ending her life, “I believed us invincible, that we could save her and be a family again. Family is…” His eyes close and there’d be tears if he was human, if he was _Barry_. “I missed it. I _miss_ it.”

It dawns on Len how trapped he is with Bart between him and freedom and no one the wiser, like the endless months they spent together. “I can’t save you, Bart. I _won't_ , not the way you want.”

Waiting for Bart’s eyes to open is the razor’s edge between order and chaos. Len doesn’t know if he’s safe or doomed until he sees _green_ and they’re clear like a sigh from the cosmos – _not today._

“I know,” Bart smiles, almost sweetly. “I need to save myself. From the dark, the _void_. Leo isn’t coming this time. Or waiting for me. Is he?”

Len’s silence is his answer, and Bart nods, accepting maybe, but close to tears he’ll never shed. He backs off instead of moving closer as if he’s trapped too – _trapped_ because he can’t bring himself to leave.

“Red really isn’t your color,” Len says, and the tension breaks with a sharp laugh and Bart picking at the fabric.

“No. Not so bright as this. It’s all bright here. His suit, his home, his… _love_ ,” he looks off distantly.

“Still think he’s a fool for choosing her?”

“Yes. But not because she isn’t worthy.” The predator returns with a tilt of his head, eyes snapping to Len and lightning crackling at his hands. “Leo called me his lightning bolt, and he was my winter wind.”

“Bart…”

“Scarlet is nice too.”

“But not _mine_.”

The feeling of Len's hair standing on end diminishes with the sparks going out bit by bit. Bart’s mad, he is, but he’s trying. “May I stay? Please. Just to sleep, nothing more.”

Len hasn’t removed the cold gun yet. He pats it. “Try anything and I’ll _ice you_.”

It’s a hollow threat but Bart laughs nonetheless and removes himself of his shirt and jeans as Len turns to divest himself of his accessories. “I like the gun, you know. It’s more elegant than I imagined, and you wield it well.”

“No clever puns either.”

Bart’s giddy now, assuaged at getting his way, however fleeting. He lies down to stretch out on the mattress and beckons Len to join him, dangerous, always dangerous, but not seductive in quite the same way. “You wield that well too, my dear, but tonight,” he pulls Len close and holds him there, “this…is nice too.”

 _Nice_. Something neither of them is, in the end. But maybe a moment can be, just one. Just this.

It’s minutes later, no more talk, no more convincing or denying, that Bart whispers to him.

“He wouldn’t.”

“Hmm?”

“Know me. He wouldn’t anymore. He’d see his father in my eyes and turn from me as Lisa did. I took the kingdom he built and reformed the prison he grew up in. Now I’m the monster in the shadows without him to temper me.”

“Don’t blame his absence for your choices,” Len says, not to be harsh but to avoid the subterfuge Bart cloaks himself in. It’s all so personal, how easy it is to fall and become something he told himself he’d never be. “You got lost. You don’t have to stay that way.”

“So I should be a hero like you?”

The irony of those words in that voice to _Len_ isn’t lost on him.

 _I’m no hero_ should have been the natural response, but he says, “Be what you want, Bart, but whatever you choose, _commit_ , and stop passing the blame.”

Bart snuggles closer with what might be a nod or more deflection, Len isn’t sure, but he’s tired, and Bart’s warm, and there is much to do tomorrow. He wishes it wasn’t so easy to sleep with these arms around him, because he can’t keep them and shouldn’t want to.

He dozes off blissfully nonetheless.

 

\----

 

Wally’s there when they wake like the time before but without the stuttering since there isn’t nudity to distract him.

“Hey, uhhh… Everyone's starting to get up.”

“We're coming, kid.”

Bart stretches like a cat as always, but Len sees how his eyes peek at Wally in his periphery with relief to see him up and about. Wally, for all his youth, eyes the lean body of the mad boy-king, this time clad in boxers, with a soft blush.

“And Bart? Thanks, man. For saving me. You’re freaky sometimes but…you’re still my brother.”

He zips off, and Len smirks to himself at the kid’s continued naivety. Or maybe it’s hope, because Bart is frozen with clarity in his eyes once more. He longs to be a brother again, needs to be part of something larger than himself.

Len’s needs are harder to define, but there’s Lisa and there’s Mick, and when they migrate toward each other in the Cortex, it’s natural and right the way it hasn’t been in ages. Bart doesn’t have that here, but he watches and he wants and he’s still deciding where that leads.

Gold and the others have moved from Keystone into Central, just as Len feared.

“They’re calling us out,” Barry says. “We can’t risk anyone getting hurt. Wally, are you good?”

“Brand new, man. Whole team this time?” He passes a friendly glance at Bart that had been missing for most of yesterday.

Barry looks around the room, full even with the Legends gone aside from Mick, and nods acceptance. He isn’t wearing red today and scans Bart with a brief frown that _he_ is, having slipped on the shirt he used for his ruse last night, much to Cisco’s disdain as well.

“Whole team.”

Gold, Pyre, Echo, and Frost are causing a ruckus downtown with several bystanders hurt but so far nothing serious, making it clear to anyone who’ll listen – especially those with phones to record their message – that they want _The Flash_. Thankfully, only Pyre is recognizable at a glance, and he’s sporting a hood like Echo that makes it more likely the general public won’t catch wise to who these people are.

No one is staying back at STAR Labs today. They have a van tricked out to get in closer and still keep an eye on CCTV, satellite footage, and anything else they might need. They also plan to have Len, Mick, and Lisa distract the otherworlders with both Barry and Bart while Wally sets up a radius of anti-meta transmitters like the cuffs they use.

If they can setup enough of them in the right radius around the area with all the otherworlders inside, all Cisco will need to do is open a portal outside the anti-power ring and demand each of them jump through.

“Then you’ll get your reward,” Barry says to Bart, with no intention of following through.

If Bart senses that, he doesn’t show it, merely flexes his fingers, back in his familiar blood-red and silver armor. It’s more striking than Barry’s, if Len’s honest, but he doesn’t seem as terrifying when he smiles at Wally in his yellow.

“Next time, my friend, _silver_ not gold.”

“I’m totally having Cisco do that.” They clasp hands, and it’s almost a shame this is all about to end.

The group is larger now, with non-combatants nearby, close enough to be vulnerable if any of Gold’s team catches wise. They have to play this safe, so for once, they let Bart lead instead of Barry.

They’re a perfect V with Bart at the apex, then Len and Barry, then Lisa and Mick, all with their guns and the speedsters with their lightning. Hartley wanted nothing to do with seeing double, so he’s gone now after pointing them in the right direction the day before.

Gold is no longer wearing her gown when they come upon the city center where she has her legs propped up lounging on the edge of a fountain. She’s still in gold but changed to form-fitted slacks with a unique flair of Victorian that maintains her royal status while making it clear she’s more apt for a fight.

The others are within view, dawdling by damaged buildings, ice residue, or embers, but not yet close enough for Wally’s placement of the emitters.  

Len’s Lisa is at his side but slightly behind right where he wants her. She tilts her head at her doppelganger, and Gold meets her stare. 

“Such a lovely face.”

“Right back at ya, sweetheart. We should share style tips sometime.”

The matching fire when Mick and Pyre regard each other is fiercer.

“Let yours get lost too, huh?” Pyre challenges.

“Wasn’t given a choice. Yours go off and play hero to get his?”

“Savin’ _them_ ,” Pyre nods at Gold, then _Bart_ with clearer contempt.

“Savin’ _me_ ,” Mick says. “Guess he’s a sentimental asshole in any world. Too bad for you though, coz ya can’t have mine.” There’s that honesty again, possessive and bold.

“Better him than Hail,” Frost says, “but we’d prefer both.”

Echo drags his gaze from Mick to Bart. “Why side with them? You fussed over _him_ like a prize, now you’re willing to leave him here? Or do you really want so much to stay?”

Len fears Bart will tell them there’s a way to bring back Leo, then they’ll all rage when it doesn’t happen, but Bart shrugs and kicks up lightning.

“I chased you here, remember? _You_ , not him. This world glares, sister. Let’s go home.”

“And let you be king again?” Echo is more assertive with three powerhouses supporting him, even if he once despised Gold and Frost as much as he ever hated Hail. “Never again. Your games. Your _tortures_. Are you all fools too, following this one?” he gestures at Barry.

“Where’s the baby boy?” Frost interrupts, focused on her own agenda that Len can’t predict as easily as the others. “Stone cold and in the ground already? They break so easily here.”

She acts smug, but she knows Wally’s out there and is already analyzing angles that might be used against her. Smart. It’s no wonder Gold trusts her the way Bart trusts Sara, left behind to keep watch over the kingdom.

“We can’t setup the perimeter like this,” Cisco says over the comms everyone shares. “Too many structures in the way. You need to move them closer to you in front of the fountain.”

Barry’s hand goes to his ear habitually at the instruction. Len curses at how transparent and green the boy is in some ways, because the act is enough to draw Echo’s attention.

“Please,” Barry says, “let’s come together to talk this through, instead of filling the whole town square and putting innocent people at risk. Let’s keep this between us.”

“A noble thought.” Gold flutters her long legs to the ground and rises from her perch. “You’re king here then, Flash?”

“It doesn’t work that way, but I am the protector of this city. I don’t want to see innocents hurt.”

“That’s better,” Cisco says, as Pyre, Frost, and Echo swarm closer to Gold, “keep them coming toward you.”

This time Barry nods, ever so subtly, and again, Echo notices and eyes the lightning bolts on his cowl. Len can’t even tell Barry to knock it off or risk everything unravelling.  

The van is visible from the battlefield taking shape, beyond the fountain, but nothing telling, just black, not one with the obvious STAR Labs logo painted across it. Still, with Echo between Barry and the van to intercept the signal with his sound-based powers, that’s more than he needs.

“You’re connected…” he says with a perusal of each of them. “Passing secrets? On what frequency, I wonder…”

Which might not have been a disaster if that moment Cisco wasn’t saying, “Just a little further, Wally, and we’ll have them.”

Echo hunkers down and all of Gold’s crew goes on alert.

 _Shit_.

“You have no intention of brokering peace. They plan to capture or kill us!”

“No, we—”

“You preach goodness but are as bad as he is!”

With all the rage he feels toward Bart, Echo blasts Barry with his sonic pulse, and in a single heartbeat the scene devolves.

Bart zips forward to take out Echo, but Pyre forms a wall of fire between them. Mick knows to go for Frost – fire over ice – while Len aims his gun at Gold’s feet, and Lisa ducks back to check on Barry.

“We can’t let this escalate,” Barry huffs, accepting her help. “ _Wally_.”

“I’m on it, but we still need them closer.”

Len’s confident they can win this fight, but not without causalities, not without Bart or more of them snapping like bawling children.

Every so often, he catches a flicker of yellow lightning that isn’t Barry – Wally placing the emitters. They need time.

Gold glides over the ice he tried to trip her with as though she were wearing skates, perfectly at home, as if, maybe, she used to play in warehouses and alleyways with ice rinks her brother made her.

Len drops his gun, hoping to get her closer as he mediates, even as Barry and Bart tag-team to knock down Echo, only for Pyre to rage at them again with a blast radius of flames that toss both of them back.

“You’d deny another you her brother when you _know_ how that feels?” Len says, because already too much love has been the norm lately, with Lisa having gone so far as to hug him yesterday.

“ _She_ isn’t me,” Gold says.

“Then I’m not Leo.”

“No. But see how well he behaves simply because you’re near.”

Bart hasn’t tried to kill any of them yet, she means.

“He doesn’t need me for that, just listen—”

Lisa’s behind Len and fires a river of gold at Frost, who Len hadn’t even seen approaching. There’s too much to focus on with flickers of lightning and blasts of colorful powers and gunfire.

“Almost…” Wally says.

“They’re plotting still,” Echo cries at intercepting it, eyes searching and then finding the van on the street behind the fountain. “There!”

The emitters matter but so does the source, the satellite controlled by Cisco in that van.

Len sees Frost turn to head there. If she gets too far away, the radius will mean nothing and the others will be at risk.

Gold’s dripping her namesake from her fingertips in a Midas touch, slow like a force of nature, closing in on Len, who can’t move or fire when he needs to _watch_.

It’s Mick and Lisa who head Frost off, knowing each other in a way that these otherworlders maybe did once but no longer. A blast from both guns forces Frost to stagger back before she passes the fountain, buying them precious time. Len’s the furthest away with Gold almost upon him, most of the others just ahead and to the right, and Frost, Lisa, and Mick to the left further up.

Barry has Echo now, and Bart has Pyre, and what could escalate further suddenly stops.

“Got it!” Wally cries, and the lightning and every other blast of color dies.

Gold gasps and raises her hands to stare at how they are once again skin.

Echo and Pyre, already pinned, feel it too.

Frost snarls, looking ready to launch herself at Lisa and Mick for robbing her of her nature, but it’s a standoff now and everybody freezes.

Except Pyre, who throws Bart off of him, much stronger than the boy when they’re reduced to mortal men.

“How…?” Gold asks in horror, like a child robbed of her favorite toy.

Wally, remaining outside the perimeter, flashes to a stop behind Len, directly across from the van on the other side of the courtyard, that finally opens its doors to reveal Cisco, Snow, West, and Iris. All but Cisco exit, West with his gun, the ladies fanning out to either side of the fountain.

Pyre throws a glare at Barry for holding Echo down, and Barry backs off, hands raised. Bart mirrors him with a raise of his own.

“Powerful people here, even those who aren’t metas,” Bart says, backing toward Lisa, “wouldn’t you agree, sister? Can we talk now, civilized, robbed of our powers on even ground?”

Anti-meta technology was faulty in Bart’s world. If it had been otherwise, maybe the police would have fared better. Bart takes it in stride, because he’s always king in his mind, and he always, always wins.

He traverses the ice Gold remains standing on with equal ease. They’ve walked this path before, together.

“It’s been too long,” Bart says with softer, saner sincerity, “I forget how beautiful you are.”

Gold smiles a familiar expression, because Lisa can make it too, false and hesitant to trust. “Not since he left us.”

“Yes…”

“Then you traded in for a new model and wouldn’t even let me see him.”

Bart cringes at that, because, for a time, that’s exactly what Len was. “Selfishness. I didn’t want to share. I didn’t want any reason to lose him again.”

It’s all happening only feet in front of Len, this private exchange for all to witness, but they hardly acknowledge him directly.

“I loved you, sister,” Bart says, “but hated you as well, one of a very small few Leo loved with equal devotion. He was never meant to love anyone as much as me…I thought.”

“You _think_.”

“I _thought_. We weren’t halves, I see that now, but pieces. I was more than half myself and half my beloved, I was you as well, and all the others. The only one who needed to pay for taking Leo from us was Rosa, and she is long dead.”

Now it’s Gold’s turn to cringe, not for Top’s loss but for her life. “You shocked her until she _cooked_ , I recall.”

“Then mourned alone instead of going to you.” Bart draws his cowl back and he’s never looked more like Barry, even when pretending to be him. “Let this world keep its echoes. We don’t need them, lovely as they may be. We’ll rebuild, start over, both kingdoms. You be queen, dear sister, and I’ll be king, together. We’ll be family again, as Leo would have wanted.”

Gold’s hand reaches for Bart as she’d reached for Len the day before, no threat without her powers, but even then, Len doesn’t think she’d mean any. When she touches skin, he holds her there with a hand over hers.

“There’s the good boy I remember.”

It’s the crackle of lightning at Bart’s feet that alerts Len to how foolish they all were, enamored with the exchange instead of watching the field of play.

Bart startles and Gold drops her hand, but it’s clear on both their faces that neither suspects betrayal from each other.

Barry spouts over the comms, “Cisco!” while focused on Pyre and Echo, who aren’t as convinced of Bart’s change of heart and start to power up.

Mick and Lisa notice Frost is no longer with them, and that’s when Len turns and sees her, farther to the left now where she’s found one of the emitters and plucked it from the ground.

Renewed powers at the ready, she grins, freezing the air around it until the long metal rod becomes a spear made of ice. Len readies himself to call in warning to whoever is in danger, but Frost doesn’t look to the opponents she’s been facing, she turns to the civilians of Team Flash beyond the fountain that would be so much more fun given her penchant for malice.

“What a boring conversation,” she says and sends her spear soaring.

Right toward Iris.

Wally’s too far away and Barry’s head turns too late, but not too late for the rush of air in front of Len that deflates his breath the moment it’s gone.

He’ll catch it, Len thinks, he’ll knock it aside, like a good hero, smarter than Barry, not sentimental.

But Bart’s taken Len’s example too close to heart, it turns out – right in the heart, his _heart_ , that catches the spear instead of his hands.

 _I've got no strings_  
_So I have fun_  
_I'm not tied up to anyone_  
_They've got strings_  
_But you can see_  
_There are no strings..._

 

TBC...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please let us know if you're still with us for the end!
> 
> Thanks again!


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I had strings but now I’m free…
> 
> Free…
> 
> Cut.
> 
> Severed."
> 
> It's time, finally, for Bart to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We honestly can't believe this journey is at an end, all starting from the brilliant mind of horchatita, which led to collaboration we both adore, and will likely return to from time to time as this story DOES continue, but consider this chapter the official end, with potential for future additions. 
> 
> Thank you all for following this story, those from the very beginning, and those who joined later. Please let us know what you think!

_I had strings but now I’m free…_

Free…

Cut.

 _Severed_.

Not a real boy, just damaged.

Bart explained to him once what time dilation felt like. Barry’s analogies, Len imagines, would be simpler, less elegant, less like an artist painting a picture and more like a scientist. But to Bart, everything was a story, and there was no point in telling it without flair.

“All around me slows like stars caught in the net of the night sky. They continue moving at their own speeds, however close or far, but nothing is as fast as I am. Even standing still like a pause put on Time, my frequency is louder than everything around me, pulsing, _roaring_ , while the world itself is silent. Then, when I move, the rest of the world roars with me.”

And what a din it is, because Len is certain he is experiencing it now—standing still while all the world stops, and it’s only him roaring at first, but then the rest of the world catches up.

Icicles fly as if shot from Len’s gun, not Frost subtly freezing air, because it isn’t from her this time, but Snow. She’s lit up in shimmering blue, her hair all but white, eyes glowing like her double’s, but her punch is stronger, and when her ice flies, several daggers are created in retaliation for her friend almost skewered, and it’s Frost punctured with holes, dropping to the ground in moments, dead.

Snow didn’t mean to kill her, Len thinks, but he can’t mourn, can’t _care_ , can barely register that he was right, when all he sees is Bart – cowl back from when he appealed to Gold, eyes staring across the city center to find him, frozen spear through his chest, and then he’s _falling_.

The first real scream is from Gold with a fury Len imagines she howled for her brother too. It is wordless and agonized – or perhaps there is something she’s shouting but Len can’t focus on any sound but the buzzing in his head.

He whirls to face Wally behind him outside the broken circle and simply says, “ _Kid_.”

 A whoosh and Len’s across the expanse at Bart’s side, dropping down to catch the boy as he falls. Len can’t rest him properly the way the spear is clean through him, but Wally, strong boy that he is, stronger than Barry, grabs the end of the emitter and pulls with a speed-driven lurch to rip it free.

Bart grunt and coughs, spiraling to find focus above him.

“Why…why would you do that?” Barry says as if he’s in more shock than Bart. Len never even heard him land beside them, but there he is – eyes wide and pleading. “You saved Iris, you saved her life.” The mixture of confusion and relief in Barry’s voice is nearly cloaked in his distress.

Bart smiles, the real one he always gave Len when his eyes were clouded by memories.

“Because,” he says, looking at his reflection as if nothing were wrong at all, “you and I, we are very much alike. I dare say, this world has seen enough of that. I could not let you lose her and set your fury free upon this bright world of yours. You will remember, won’t you, silly one? There but for the grace of God go I.”

“I…yes I will, I…” Barry chokes on his words, understanding even if he doesn’t get the words.

“That’s enough, Scarlet,” Len whispers, pulling Bart closer, away from Barry, away from Wally beside him, “you’re not what he wants to see right now.”

Shrugging off his parka, Len lays it beneath Bart’s head and takes his hand, hovering over him and ready to cup his cheek as if nothing were happening.

“Hello, beautiful,” he says, his voice as smooth as a mirage, “shhh, it’s okay, my lightning bolt, the pain will pass.”

Wally bites back a sob, and Len thinks he hears Gold too—maybe Lisa, maybe both.

“Leo?” Bart blinks, and Len can tell he’s having trouble seeing, the wound too deep, too fatal to heal with scattered, smaller wound like they used on Wally. “Oh, Leo…I’ve met the most marvelous people.”

“A dream, my love. A silly dream.”

“It wasn’t always silly. I loved a beautiful girl, fierce and raging like a storm, like _you_.” He giggled clear and melodic before adding, “Don’t be jealous, dear.”

“Never,” Len fights to clear his throat from what’s caught there, feeling Barry and Iris’s eyes on him from where they stand together, and all the others’ too, “I hope it was a nice dream.”

“It was. Lisa was sweet and soft – unharmed and unburdened, Mick loyal as ever… You fancied my Songbird, but she sought something else, as she’s wont to do. But the girl, oh Leo, the girl…goddess of sea and sky, had such a lovely family. I ran with one. Oh, to run and not be alone, brothers and warmth…it was a nice...dream.”

It’s Iris now whose sob is muffled by turning toward Barry, Len assumes, since he can’t look away, not for a moment.

Bart’s chest rises up in a spasm and he coughs loose and haggard. “A-And you, beloved…but different…human but a king at his core. His world, his heart...they were so bright, so beautiful. I would have liked to keep him…”

_But now—_

_But now I’m—_

_But now I’m…_

_…free._

“My greedy boy. Isn’t one of me enough?”

“Leo?” Bart asks, his voice so young and broken – but his eyes are clear now, as clear as they have been the past few days and Len knows, the one time he tries to give Bart what he wants, he’s failed magnificently, because he’s crying and the tears have landed on Bart’s cheek.

“ _Len_ ,” he croaks out, “my sweet soft-hearted Len.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and means it with every part of him.

“Don’t be,” Bart says, weaker with each breath, “don’t be. I did a selfish thing I, I saved her for him – that you can have a world…a world without a heartbroken god. You deserve…you deserve this. The bright world that rings true to you and an undivided passion of your own. Someone…someone will love _you_ this much.”

“That’s alright, Bart,” Len says, “that’s okay. I wasn’t lying before. You were mine for a little while. That’s enough. That’s enough for me, my lightning bolt. Loud and blinding and—” _gone, there and suddenly not._

The blood is pooling in Bart’s mouth and his eyes are clouding, looking far beyond Len over his shoulder.

“Leo…” Len can barely make out the word, but then Bart says it again with an undercurrent of joy he's never heard before, “Leo… _there_ you are.”

The hand he’s holding goes limp, and Bart’s eyes, beautiful and terrible, turn glassy, empty, and just like that, Len knows the boy finally has his beloved back.

He didn’t cry for Lewis. Never could, never would. He did for the loss of Mick on the Waverider, a stubborn tear or two alone in his bunk, before Kronos changed everything. He thinks there must be something broken in him now that the tears come so easy.

Maybe it’s the ice that killed him or the lack of his electric warmth, but Len would swear he can feel Bart’s body going cold in his arms already.

Snow’s back to brunette, but she can’t hide what she is, what she did. She doesn’t look sorry, maybe vindicated in killing a part of herself she hates. Gold’s crew holds no remorse for the woman, not even Gold herself who had Frost in her court for so long.

Echo goes to pick up her broken body, because Pyre comes forward to take Bart. There’s sorrow in the strong, familiar face. He didn’t want Hail dead, for Leo’s sake he didn’t, just never trusted him, and hoped that maybe Len could bring back some of the boy Leo loved, and they all once fought beside.

Maybe he did. He’d like to think he did.

Len lets go, puts Bart as gently as he can into Pyre’s arms and watches the man flinch; his ever-heated skin pained by the touch of deathly cold.

All the fight is gone out of them when Gold takes Len’s hand and lifts him from the ground. Len can’t find himself to be afraid for his life, perhaps just in this moment he doesn’t really care. She kisses his cheek and the only stain of gold she leaves behind is from her lipstick.

“We’ll be a dream too,” she says softly, “try to forget us. Else your world will crack like ours under your sorrow.”

Cisco steps from the van to open a portal without being asked, and the visitors from another world head toward it without argument like fairies heading Underhill.

“Wait…” Len says before they can step through.

Pyre knows to turn, to keep Bart within easy reach of Len, and for all his posturing, he can’t care that he has an audience, hand shaking as he smooths the soft brown hair, kisses Bart’s forehead, and whispers, “I forgive you.”

To anyone else, it might seem meager, but Len has never said those words to anyone his whole life.

If you’re out…

 _Fuck_.

With a nod from Gold to Barry in apology, they’re gone – gone, _gone_ – never to return.

_There are no strings…_

_…on…_

_\-----_

“Never known you to come here yourself,” Mick says from just a few feet behind him, the air cold with the promise of an early snow just the way Len knows Mick hates.

“How’d you know where it is?”

“You have flowers sent like clockwork,” Mick mutters, “you think I’m not gonna know where it is?”

“I just—”

“Yeah. I figured,” Mick says – too quiet again, “I’ll leave ya be.”

“It’s fine, I’m done,” Len turns away from the small neat headstone.

 

_Lorna Abrahamson_

_1955-1979_

 

“Something you needed?”

“I’m going on mission,” Mick says, not for the first time since they came together again. Every time he asks, and every time Len declines. Anyone else, Len expects, would eventually stop asking. But Mick isn’t anyone else.

“Not this time, but I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Better be.”

“What? You’re chewin’ on something.”

“Gonna try sellin’ the boss on Rathaway.”

“Don’t want to hear about your conquests in front of my mother’s grave,” Len says, half serious maybe, but half _enough_ , stepping away and falling to pace beside Mick. “Dr. Snow hasn’t come around, then?”

Mick doesn’t deny it. Len wouldn’t expect him to, not this Mick.

“ _She’s_ got somewhere to be. But the kid’s got skills and he’s wasting here, playin’ second string.”

“Bring me something pretty,” Len says, by way of denying the implied invitation once again.

The truth is Len isn’t chomping at the bit to sail back into the wilderness of Time just yet. Some nights he’ll wake in a cold sweat, still feeling the discordant buzz of another world’s frequency, still feeling the warmth of Bart’s body drain away in his arms. Sometimes, he still wonders if he’s lost in Time, in limbo.

He holds back when Mick returns to the ship and waves the Legends away from a spot none of them can see, where only Mick knows to nod without turning to him. He watches the bright storm of them blipping away and wonders about all the tiny ways he’ll feel history shifting in their wake.

He hasn’t told anyone, perhaps he never will, but ever since his return he can feel the adjustments, the loud repercussions, every change that is made. Like the strumming of tight strings, he can feel it reverberating in his blood. He wouldn’t call it a power, not even an ability. At best, he thinks, he is a witness.

The months trip one over the other, his life becoming less recognizable in the most incomprehensible ways. When the time comes for Barry Allen to marry Iris West, Len’s apartment is flooded by time traveling idiots and he even finds himself at a top tier table with them.

Sara leans close to him when they dance and he doesn’t tell her and she doesn’t ask him, but they’ve both played enough with Time and life to know that somewhere close and far away this life might have belonged to them.

He spends the rest of the night at Mick’s side, muttering teasing encouragement. He leans in and whispers, “Tell her plainly how it feels like her fingertips burn cold through your skin.”

He doesn’t tell him as he leans back about lives where the cold and burning fingertips might have belonged to the two of them.

Here, in this life, Len is a king of nothing and a lover of no one. Here is home, where he belongs and nothing belongs to him in turn.

The rush of stealing never leaves him, not even as he turns from mindless hoarding to the reinstitution of spoils to their rightful places – sometimes Robin Hooding on his own in current day, sometimes as a reluctant _Legend_ through time, when it suits him. Even while he escorts precious jewels and ancient manuscripts to the people and places they were ripped away from, he holds them as his for a little while – just long enough to feel that something, anything at all, belongs to him.

“Snart,” Barry says one night in an empty museum hallway.

“Mr. West-Allen,” Len greets as he continues about the business of releasing an Incan artifact from its laser-tipped holding.

“You know – Rory told Caitlin about the stock he bought you and Lisa. He was bragging that he’s got future info, but then Cisco started calling him ‘Biff’ and he did _not_ expect Mick to get the reference and then there was some aggression –”

“What’s your point, kid?”

“That you’re rich. Like grossly rich. Why are you here on a Sunday night?”

“Because they stole it first. I have a flight to Bolivia next week and I’d rather only make one trip, if you don’t mind. Why are you here? Last I heard you were…how to put it…in the family planning endeavor.”

“There need to be limits to the gossip in this city…”

“What do you want, Barry?”

The boy clears his throat in that guilty way that makes Len look up from his work.

“What?”

 “I promise this time it isn’t a dead body, but it is someone from another Earth. He needs our help.”

“No.”

“He asked for you by name. And he isn’t – he isn’t. Nowhere near that Earth.”

Len returns to the task at hand, the tension in his shoulders making it all the more difficult. Once the artifact is released and slipped into his bag, he stalks toward Barry.

“I’m not a child in need of a new puppy,” he snaps under his breath, “and whomever you have asking for me isn’t really asking for _me_ , catch my drift? So, you and your merry band will do what it is you do. Then send him home.”

“He doesn’t have a home to go back to, Snart. Please, just hear him out.”

No, _no_ – NO.

Len thinks it adamantly, over and over, a constant mantra, yet somehow, spoils tucked at his side that Barry knew better than to try to reclaim, he ends up in the basement of STAR Labs anyway, where they keep their portal for those less inclined to creating them out of thin air like _Vibe_.

If Barry wasn’t walking beside Len, he’d think he’d come upon a normal day between Cisco, Wally, and the _Scarlet Speedster_ among them. Only this new Barry isn’t in any suit or armor, he’s dressed simply, like he could be anyone from anywhere.

He turns at Len’s entrance and he’s…not Bart. Not Barry either. He seems sad. And tired. World-weary and worn down, maybe from war and loss and all around too much of everything, but there’s a glimmer of Barry’s energy there, his ever-present optimism, that Bart was often missing.

Barry’s filled Len in on some of this boy and his world. He’s come from disaster, his stepparent – who he named as Harry, which made Barry cringe when he recounted it to think of a Wells with his mother – having sent him away like Moses to save him from destruction. He got out just in time, his world all but gone now, but there may still be something left, _someone_ left worth finding and saving to rebuild a world torn apart by time distortions and overused superpowers for decades.

“Hi,” he says as if he doesn’t have that baggage on him, looking at Len like he’s seen a ghost, and Len worries Barry lied, or this new boy lied, because that’s hope in his eyes that’s too familiar.

Then he fills in the gaps Barry didn’t.

He doesn’t have powers. The age of heroes ended when he was a little boy and all he remembers is _Commander_ Cold, who died young. There was a statue of him in a park when he was growing up, but it depicted him with all his gear. The reality of Len, his eyes seem to say, is beautiful and human and stunning to him in jeans and tight long sleeves and his salt and pepper hair.

Len would be humbled, if he was the type to be humbled.

“Still Bartholomew I assume?”

“Yep,” he answers with a brightness to bely the exhaustion in his eyes.

“Barry then? Or…Bart?” Len tries very hard not to catch on the name.

“Tol, actually. Tolly. I guess that’s old fashioned here.”

“Gotta be Tol next to a smol,” Wally says without a missed beat, patting Cisco’s shoulder beside him, who stares back deadpanned, while Barry and _Tolly_ laugh like echoes.

“You think that’s funny? That’s _hurtful_ , man. Hurtful,” Cisco says in a way that isn’t hurt at all, as only friends can.

Wally smiles, but Len sees the flicker of mourning in the creases for the all too brief and bright friend he made who wasn’t the same as his brother or Tolly. Then his eyes flick to Len, and he doesn’t _understand_ but he holds Len’s gaze for longer than Barry can most days.

Tolly isn’t The Flash, or Hail, or any variation, he’s just Tolly Wells, whose father was The Flash and died in the wars of old, no powers passed on just a legacy, raised by another who respected that. He’s smarter than Barry, Len notices straightaway, maybe because he had to be in a world already falling apart by the time he was old enough to understand he had no future. There wasn’t an enemy to fight other than science to overcome, but it all came too late and all he can do now is hope to put back together what’s broken.

He needs the combined powers of Vibe and the Speed Force to do it, but if they help him, which they’ve been doing already, he might be able to save a few people back home, even if everyone he ever loved is gone.

“Where do I fit in, kid?” Len asks.

“To be honest, I think your face will bring the people hope, help me lead them to a new beginning, so we can start over.”

“I’m no hero. No meta powers for me.”

“He wasn’t a meta either. Just a good man. The way they tell it, that’s exactly who you are too.”

Damn Barry and his never-failing beliefs, his pity and his caring. Damn Cisco and Wally too for not flinching when Len glares at them. His stare used to carry weight, now they know he doesn’t mean it.

“Got a friend doing his own heroing out there, expects me to be here when he gets back.”

“You will be. There’s no danger once we stabilize the collapsing planet core, just a lot of wasteland to canvas for survivors, see how we can help. I won’t keep you long. And it might be a while before we’re ready to head there anyway. Even after doing all we can, I don’t know if I’ll stay when we’re done.”

“It’s your home, isn’t it?”

“Home can be anywhere,” Tolly says, with more hope than a man in his position should have any right to, maybe from so much loss, insurmountable, that he didn’t have time to break. “It’s about the people, not the place. Too much is missing for it to feel like home anymore. I’d rather travel through worlds, or Time, or who knows what now that I know what’s possible. Help where I can, take some time to…figure out where home might be again. For now, I’m just looking for a friendly face to help a few weary people.”

Earnest, always so earnest, but there’s something else in Tolly too. Len wonders if this is what Barry would be like if he’d never been touched by lightning but still knew catastrophe. He’s heard of the Barry from Earth-2, who never knew loss at all, but Tolly was forged from fire instead of lightning, and there’s an urgency in his eyes to cling to anything he’s offered, anything he can hold that’s _his_ , almost manic at moments but not…unhinged, caught somewhere between Barry and Bart, which is too unfair. _Unfair_ when nothing good ever lasts.

But Tolly looks at Len like…

_Like…_

He doesn’t have the strength to do this again and _lose_. He doesn’t. He doesn’t…

And yet.

“How’d you find us anyway?”

“I didn’t. Not specifically. We set course for any earth, but along the way there was this…light? I can’t explain it, but I felt at the time like it led me here.”

 _Lorna_ , Len thinks. Time. The Speed Force. All those meddling assholes.

“I suppose I can lend a hand…for a while. Don’t expect some big damn hero though, you’ll just set yourself up for disappointment.”

“I don’t know about that. Sometimes reality is better. It's nice to know you, Leonard.” He reaches to shake Len’s hand, and Len thinks it an odd thing that he’s never done this with the other Bartholomews in his life.

He accepts the boy’s grasp. “Len.”

“Len? I like it. Leonard’s a little old-fashioned even in my world. Len’s better.”

“Oh yeah? Jury's still out on whether _Tolly_ is.” He means the name, of course – _of course_.

“It grows on you, I promise,” he says with a laugh.

That…Len is going to have to wait and see, because the last thing he wants today is to move too fast with any miracle boy in his path. “I’ll take your word for it, kid, and keep you posted.”

The others are all smiling, hovering, waiting, the nosy brats.

_I got no…_

Well.

Maybe a few strings aren’t so bad.

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We warned you, we did...but it's still bittersweet. Please let us know your thoughts and if there is interest in Tolly's story. We do so want a happy ending for Len, and gave him the only one we saw as feasible in this 'verse. 
> 
> Thank you, THANK YOU! 
> 
> And here's a tissue if needed. :-)

**Author's Note:**

> Based on my long running Earth-17 Headcanons.


End file.
